Communication Power

Manuel Castells is University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, as well as Research Professor of Information Society at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at MIT and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University. He was Professor of Sociology and of Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1979 to 2003. He has published 23 books, including the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Blackwell, 1996-2000), translated into 22 languages, and The Internet Galaxy (OUP, 2001) translated into 15 languages. He is a Fellow of the European Academy, of the British Academy, and of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics. He has received 14 honorary doctorates and has been knighted by France, Catalonia, Finland, Portugal, and Chile.

• Opening ; 1. Power in the Network Society ; 2. Communication in the Digital Age ; 3. Networks of Mind and Power ; 4. Programming Communication Networks: Media Politics, Scandal Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy ; 5. Reprogramming Communication Networks: Social Movements, Insurgent Politics, and the New Public Space ; 6. Toward a Communication Theory of Power

Castells has done it again, a masterpiece of global perspective and enviable erudition. Moving beyond his trilogy on the information age, Castells focuses on how cultural, economic and particularly political power relationships are constituted and sustained through systematic communication flows. A new line of analysis draws on neuroscience and cognitive psychology to track the role of emotion in political communication. Case studies include global media deregulation, the politics of scandal, framing the war in Iraq, ecological social movements, the Obama presidential candidacy and a fascinating comparison of media control dynamics in Russia and China.