CRASSH

Symposium: Communication Power in the Network Society

Speakers and abstracts

Professor Ash Amin (Geography, University of Cambridge): Affect and the Politics of Opposition

This paper engages with Castells' arguments on affective politics, and its locus in the precognitive.  It considers the implications of unreason on Left politics, by way of a historical detour; the rise of the Left at the end of the 19th century.  This was a period of Left progress combining passion, worlding and organisation, all challenges for renewal today.

Ash Amin joined Cambridge in August 2011 as 1931 Chair of Geography, after 16 years at Durham University.  He writes about race and multiculturalism, cities and regions, the changing nature of politics, and cultures of economy. His recent books include Architectures of Knowledge (with Patrick Cohendet, Oxford University Press, 2004), The Cultural Economy Reader (edited with Nigel Thrift, Blackwell, 2005), and Community, Economic Creativity and Organization (edited with Joanne Roberts, 2008, Oxford University Press). In 2012, his book with Nigel Thrift Political Openings, which outlines new arts for the Left will be published by Duke, as will his book Land of Strangers  published by Polity, which examines the biopolitics of belonging in the contemporary West.

Professor Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths, University of London): The Network Society and its missing Social

This paper will consider the status of 'the social' in theories of the 'network society', looking critically at the metaphors and practices of explanation that are emphasised or downplayed in Castells' major book Communication Power. It will conclude that Castells' theory of the network society is weakened, not strengthened, by its reliance on metaphors of programming and neural networking, and suggest that the radical potential of this theory can only be fully developed if it is joined with a more robust account of the resources of everyday action and constraint, including those of everyday media.

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and Director of its Centre for the study of Global Media and Democracy. He is the author or editor of ten books including most recently Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (forthcoming Polity 2012) and Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism (Sage 2010). 

Professor Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths, University of London): Multiplicity, Autonomy, New Media and the Networked Politics of New Social Movements

One of the striking differences between the counter publicity of new social movements (NSMs) and the counter politics of the nation-state is the lack of a common identity and rejection of unifying meta-narratives of organization. NSMs are characterised by their multiplicity as a movement of movements, a network of networks, a politics of non-representation, affect and antagonism. This multiplicity is also inflected by another concept – autonomy – the principle that no-one speaks for the collective, that each takes control of their own political activism. Through addressing the political issues raised by the multiplicity of voices in transnational mediated spaces and the rejection of meta narratives of political ideas in favour of autonomous political subjects and values, this paper offers an appreciation of how the concept of multiplicity may progress the agonistic dimensions of a non-essentialist politics and that of autonomy may signal a break from dominant structures and understandings of power. But both run the risk of being translated into either a liberal tolerance of difference that in fact prevents substantive questions from being asked, or an anarchic, autonomous and ultimately individualistic politics that prevents substantive change from happening.

Natalie Fenton is a Professor in Media and Communications and joint Head of Department in the Department of Media and Communication, Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre (where she is part of a team researching issues relating to the news) and Co-Director of Goldsmiths Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy. She has published widely on issues relating to news, journalism, civil society, radical politics and new media and is particularly interested in rethinking understandings of public culture, the public sphere and democracy. Her latest book, New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age (ed.) is published by Sage, 2010. Her forthcoming books are Misunderstanding the Internet (with James Curran and Des Freedman) published by Routledge in 2012 and New Media and Radical Politics, published by Polity.

Dr Damian Tambini (Media and Communications, LSE, London): Constitutionalisation of Communication Power

This talk examines the implications of Castells theory of communication power in relation to the institutionalisation and constitutionalisation of media power. The emergence of media power, and the legal and policy response to new centres of media power are examined with reference to the emergence of the notions of freedom of the press and of expression, and attempts to develop checks and balances on media power. Then Castells' notions of the various forms of network power are examined, with a discussion of the role of regulation and policy in reconstituting institutionalisation and checks and balances of networked/ media power.

Damian Tambini is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications, LSE and convenor of the MSC in Communication Governance. He is also director of http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/, LSE's Media Policy Project and Blog.  He is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), at the Oxford Internet Institute and at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.  He was Head of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University from June 2002 - August 2006. Dr Tambini's research interests include media and telecommunications policy and democratic communication. He co-edited Cyberdemocracy (Routledge 1998) and Citizenship, Markets, and the State (Oxford University Press 2000). Other recent and forthcoming publications include: Collective Identities in Action: Theories of Ethnic Conflict (Ashgate, September 2002); New News: Impartial Broadcasting in the Digital Age (edited by D. Tambini and J. Cowling, IPPR 2002); Privacy and the Media (IPPR, December 2003), and Codifying Cyberspace (Routledge, 2008).

 Return to top

 Print Page