open university press media politics and the network society mar 2004

Media, Politics and the Network Society • What is the network society? • What effects does it have upon media, culture and politics? • What are the competing forces in the network society, and how are they reshaping the world? The rise of the network society – the suffusion of much of the economy, culture and society with digital interconnectivity – is a development of immense significance. In this innovative book, Robert Hassan unpacks the dynamics of this new information order and shows how they have affected both the way media and politics are ‘played’, and how these are set to reshape and reorder our world. Using many of the current ideas in media theory, cultural studies and the politics of the newly evolving ‘networked civil society’, Hassan argues that the network society is steeped with contradictions and in a state of deep flux. This is a key text for undergraduate students in media studies, politics, cultural studies and sociology, and will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the network society and play a part in shaping it. Robert Hassan is Australian Research Council Fellow in Media and Communications at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University, Australia. He has written numerous articles on the nature of the network society from the perspectives of temporality, political economy and media theory, and is author of The Chronoscopic Society (2003). Cover illustration: Charlotte Combe Cover design: Barker/Hilsdon Media, Politics and the Network Society Media, Politics and the Network Society Robert Hassan Hassan 9 780335 213153 ISBN 0-335-21315-4 0 -2 I S SU E S in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES I S SU E S in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES SERIES EDITOR: STUART ALLAN www.openup.co.uk Media and politics… 11/3/04 3:11 pm Page 1 MEDIA, POLITICS AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES ISSUES Series Editor: Stuart Allan Published titles News Culture Stuart Allan Modernity and Postmodern Culture Jim McGuigan Sport, Culture and the Media, 2nd edition David Rowe Television, Globalization and Cultural Identities Chris Barker Ethnic Minorities and the Media Edited by Simon Cottle Cinema and Cultural Modernity Gill Branston Compassion, Morality and the Media Keith Tester Masculinities and Culture John Beynon Cultures of Popular Music Andy Bennett Media, Risk and Science Stuart Allan Violence and the Media Cynthia Carter and C. Kay Weaver Moral Panics and the Media Chas Critcher Cities and Urban Cultures Deborah Stevenson Cultural Citizenship Nick Stevenson Culture on Display Bella Dicks Critical Readings: Media and Gender Edited by Cynthia Carter and Linda Steiner Critical Readings: Media and Audiences Edited by Virginia Nightingale and Karen Ross Media and Audiences Karen Ross and Virginia Nightingale Critical Readings: Sport, Culture and the Media Edited by David Rowe Rethinking Cultural Policy Jim McGuigan Media, Politics and the Network Society Robert Hassan MEDIA, POLITICS AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY Robert Hassan OPEN UNIVERSITY PRESS Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berkshire England SL6 2QL email: enquiries@openup.co.uk. world wide web: www.openup.co.uk and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA First published 2004 Copyright © Robert Hassan 2004 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 4LP. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 335 21315 4 (pb) 0 335 21316 2 (hb) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in the UK by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow For Kate, Theo and Camille CONTENTS SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xii ABBREVIATIONS xiii INTRODUCTION 1 || WHAT IS THE NETWORK SOCIETY? 8 1 The revolution has been normalized 8 Noticing it 1: the rise of the network society 12 A few facts on the history of the Internet and the network society 12 Noticing it 2: a way to think about networks (not just the Internet) 15 Digital Technology 16 Digital Capitalism 18 Digital Globalization 23 Digital Acceleration 27 Pessimism or critique? 30 Further reading 32 || THE INFORMATIONIZATION OF MEDIA AND CULTURE 33 2 So what is ‘media’ and what is ‘culture’ anyway? 34 Media 34 Culture 36 The dialectics of media–culture 40 Spaces of culture 41 Mass media = mass culture? 41 Hegemony and mass media 44 Networked media, networked culture: the disappearance of the dialectic 47 Going, but not gone 52 Further reading 54 || ADDICTED TO DIGITAL: THE WIRED WORLD 55 3 Connecting . . . 55 CyberAsia 59 Roll with it 61 Get a life(style) 63 A wired world of risk? 64 Deleted . . . the digital divide 66 Wired world wars 70 The surveillance society: living with digital ‘Big Brother’ 73 Further reading 78 || LIFE.COM 79 4 ‘The future has arrived; it’s just not evenly distributed’ 79 A day in wired life 81 Bits and atoms 90 Cyborgs ‘R’ Us 95 Further reading 99 || CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY 100 5 The colonization of civil society 100 A global political movement for the age of globalization 105 The politics of technopolitics 112 Further reading 115 || TACTICAL MEDIA 116 6 Tactical media in action 119 Culturejamming 120 Warchalking 121 Digital direct action 123 Further reading 125 || A NETWORKED CIVIL SOCIETY? 126 7 Neoliberal globalization today 127 || MEDIA, POLITICS AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY viii Countertrends from the networked civil society 131 Conclusion 134 Further reading 139 GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS USED IN THE BOOK 140 REFERENCES 145 INDEX 153 CONTENTS || ix [...]... or beige and which sat, expensive and immobile, in the hallway next to the pot plant So why the focus upon media, culture and politics when trying to understand the network society, when the network society is, as I will show below, fundamentally an economic and technological phenomenon? Allow me to sketch these reasons schematically for the moment and then deal with them in some detail in the chapters... the idea that these networking activities in themselves are neither good nor bad; but they do mean something, and they say something about the sort of society we live in They are part of much larger, interconnected dynamics and it is important that we understand what these are, and the ways in which they affect us Why is it important? It is no exaggeration to say that the evolution of the network society. .. Illustration of these scapes gives form and function to the dynamics of the information order and sets the context for the rest of the book Chapter 2 looks at the informationization of media and culture It begins with some grounding discussion on the meanings of the terms media and ‘culture’ From there it moves to an analysis of the ‘dialectics of media- culture’ and how the spaces in which they operate... is the bread and butter stuff of media studies, cultural studies and politics It is But the rise of the network society has changed these dynamics and placed the interactions of media, culture and politics on to a new level, to the level of digitization and informationization, and this ‘digital dialectic’, to borrow a term from Peter Lunenfeld (2000), is having a profound effect upon them Understanding... is that the applications and devices that connect from the Internet and connect us to it are growing in number and in sophistication all the time These are deepening and widening the realm of the network and the growing numbers of people connected to it and who make it a society The difference between today and the ‘heroic’ first phase of the revolution is that the time of the Gatesean individualist... (and will continue to happen) with such speed and comprehensiveness that most of us barely notice it or consider its consequences 11 12 | MEDIA , POLITICS AND THE NE T WORK SOCIE T Y Noticing it 1: the rise of the network society Since the beginning of the 1990s at least, there have been many books written about the emergence of the network society and its implications for the economy, for culture and. .. majority of the inhabitants of the network society will assure neoliberalism’s uncontested ideological rule and its ongoing economic and technological shaping of the network society in its own image Understanding the network society, its political economy, its history, its continuities from the pre-digital age, and their agencies for change, is but the first step away from neutrality and passivity and an... needs to be devoted to the processes of social exclusion – the very digital divide – at the heart of the network society Robert Hassan’s Media, Politics and the Network Society takes up precisely this challenge The network society is more than the Internet, he points out; it encompasses everything that does and will connect to it, creating in the process an information ecology where the logic of commodification... suffuse all social life These generate the symbols and the representations that shape identity and help us to attribute meaning to the world and our place within it Cultural production, being both ‘ordinary’ and vital to the constitution and shape of society, has been transformed by the networking of society Forms of media, media practices and media institutions, it will be immediately obvious, play... upon media, upon cultural production and upon politics? These are the principal questions that this book will deal with In response to these sorts of questions many have predicted wonderful times ahead for life in the network society Others, less numerous, foresee only doom and gloom These are either the worst of times or the best of times, according to the differing poles of perception regarding the networked . Media, Politics and the Network Society • What is the network society? • What effects does it have upon media, culture and politics? • What are the competing forces in the network society, and. Culture and the Media Edited by David Rowe Rethinking Cultural Policy Jim McGuigan Media, Politics and the Network Society Robert Hassan MEDIA, POLITICS AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY Robert Hassan OPEN UNIVERSITY. and media theory, and is author of The Chronoscopic Society (2003). Cover illustration: Charlotte Combe Cover design: Barker/Hilsdon Media, Politics and the Network Society Media, Politics and