Reshaping Communications

Paschal Preston holds a research professorship in the School of Communications in Dublin City University.Paschal Preston is the founding director of the COMTEC research unit. Founded in 1991, COMTEC was one of the first social science research centres in the Irish university sector. COMTEC now has a distinguished 20-year record of successful collaborative and multi-country research projects. For more on COMTEC, click here.Paschal Preston is also a member of the Society, Information and Media (SIM) research centre. SIM was established in 2005 to embrace the broad research interests of staff in the School of Communication, including those engaged in media practice as well as academic research on media production, policy and consumption issues.

• PART ONE: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEWInformation Superhighways or Super-HypewaysPART TWO: COMPETING THEORIES OF THE CONTEMPORARYThird Wave VisionsTechnology as Social TransformerAn Archeology of Imformation (Sector) Matters′Information Society′ TheoriesCulture and InformationPostmodernisms and the Public SpherePART THREE: MAPPING A NEW MILLENNIUM AND MULTIMEDIA ORDERChanges, Continuities and CyclesTowards a More Realist(ic) TheoryThe ′Atoms and Bits′ of Informational CapitalismPolaritiesNew Modes of Work, Consumption and State Regimes′Content Is King′?New Media and ′Mature′ Media InnovationsInformation as New FrontierCommofication and Consumption StakesPART FOUR: ALTERNATIVE PROSPECTS AND POSSIBILITIESBeyond Technological FetishismTowards a New Social and Media Order @Y2K+

`This is a stimulating, well argued book on an important contemporary subject and based, as is rare in this field, on up-to-date empirical data′ - Nicholas Garnham, University of Westminster