“Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society” - Castells Manuel

Castells Manuel, “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), pp238-266.

Manuel Castells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communications research. John Conomos is a new media artist and critic who teach at Sydney Collage of the Arts, University of Sydney.

There are interesting ideas about globalization in relation to communication and media in the text by Manuel Castells. He talks about mass-communication and media politics and points out the issues and how media affects Politics and what mass-communication do in the society. John Conomos mentions in his writing ‘New Media, Culture, Identity’ that people and culture is drifting because of the idea of globalisation. “globalisation refers to our turbulent world of withering ‘nation-states’ and new ‘chaotic’ forms of movement of people, capital, culture, ideas, goods, symbols and global media networks set adrift.”1
From development of the mass self- communications like Facebook, youtube and twitter, the ‘many to many’2 communication is much easier and faster. By using these communication methods, public networking is growing- not only because of its quick easy structure but also because of its anonymity. Since anyone can write, comment and make statements anonymously, there are two sides of positive and negative values. The positive side is that the public can be more honest, active and people can make their voices heard without the help of media. On the other hand, there is possible danger of misleading the public or the losing control of the original information. “Yet any post in the internet, regardless of the intention of its author, becomes a bottle drifting in the ocean of global communication, a message susceptible of being received and reprocessed in unexpected ways.”3
The question about the ownership and the control of the information is something that interests me in relation to artists’ practices. I want to state that this issue especially in relation to the notion of ‘Contemporary’ arts which I believe the ‘idea’ becomes most crucial part of the art making and art works. Losing control of the ideas and ownership of any artist’s ideas would be like losing an actual art work.









1. John Conomos, Nikos Papasergiais, ed. ‘Complex Entanglements – Art, Globalisation and cultural Difference’, London: Rivers Oram Press, 2003, pp.127
2. ‘The communication system of the industrial society was centred around the mass media, characterised by the mass distribution of a one-way message from one to many. The communication foundation of the network society is the global web of horizontal communication networks that include the multimodal exchange of interactive messages from many to many both synchronous and asynchronous.’
- Castells Manuel, “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p246
3. Castells Manuel, “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p247