Session 4 Communication, Power and Technology

1. Communication, Power and Technology Dr. Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez Correo-e: juan.manfredi@yahoo.es juan.manfredi@ie.edu Twitter: @juanmanfredi http://ciberdemocracia.blogspot.com

2. 2 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Throughout history communication and information have been fundamental sources of power and counter-power, of domination and social change This is the battle over the hearts and minds of the people Why? The way people think determines the fate of norms and values on which societies are constructed Because communication, and particularly socialized communication, the one that exists in the public realm, provides the support for the social production of meaning What’s the difference? The pervasiveness of communication networks in a multimodal hypertext

3. 3 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power The digital age extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that is at the same time global and local, generic and customized in an ever-changing pattern This is challenging institutionalized power relations Power: The structural capacity of a social actor to impose its will over other social actor(s). All institutional systems reflect power relations, as well as the limits to these power relations as negotiated by a historical process of domination and counter-domination.

4. 4 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power

5. 5 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power

6. 6 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Power in organizations is a complex question The capacity to influence the thought and behavior of other people or organizations Seven dimensions Legitimate Power Reward Power Coercive Power Connection Power Information Power Expert Power Referent Power Position Power Personal Power

7. 7 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Four types of power in the network society Networking power: The power of inclusion and exclusion from a network. Network power: Whoever sets the standards/rules has power over those usign the network. Networked power: Some actors (nodes) work harder than others and have more connections and more scope to impose their opinion, but under the constraints of network power). Network-making power: People (although more usually networks of people) who can program the creation and joining of networks in order to augment information sharing.

8. 8 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Network-making power: “paramount form of power in the network society” Who? Programmers: the power to constitute networks and to program/reprogram the networks in terms of the goals assigned to the network Switchers: the power to connect and ensure the cooperation of different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources, while fending off competition from other networks by setting up strategic cooperation

9. 9 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Malcolm Gladwell’s Three Laws on social networks

10. 10 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Networks became the most efficient organizational form as a result of three major features of networks which benefited from the new technological environment: flexibility, scalability and survivability. Flexibility is the ability to reconfigure according to changing environments and retain their goals while changing their components, sometimes bypassing blocking points of communication channels to find new connections. Scalability is the ability to expand or shrink in size with little disruption. Survivability is the ability of networks, because they have no single centre and can operate in a wide range of configurations, to withstand attacks on their nodes and codes because the codes of the network are contained in multiple nodes that can reproduce the instructions and find a new way to perform. (p23) Flexibility Scalability Survivability

11. 11 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Counter-power: The capacity of a social actor to resist and challenge power relations that are institutionalized. Indeed, power relations are by nature conflictive, as societies are diverse and contradictory. Therefore, the relationship between technology, communication, and power reflects opposing values and interests, and engages a plurality of social actors in conflict. We face a new technological framework -> this has consequences for the ways, means, and goals of their conflictive practice

12. 12 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 1. The Power Why? The predominant role of media politics and its interaction with the crisis of political legitimacy in most countries around the world The key role of segmented, customized mass media in the production of culture The emergence of horizontal networks of communication: mass selfcommunication The uses of both one-directional mass communication and mass self-communication in the relationship between power and counter-power, in formal politics, in insurgent politics, and in the new manifestations of social movements

13. 13 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 2. The Communication in the Digital Age Organizational transformation: The transformation of media to the current multi-media business model represents the heart of the system. These corporations have an incredible level of resources, capital and power but are also decentralized to fit into the diverse world that they inform. Technological transformation: The digitalization of communication, through elements such as internet and wireless has led to the rise in mass-communication, including mass-self-communication moving the communication paradigm from one to many, to many to many. Cultural Transformation: The audience has developed out of being a passive object, content to receive information, to intervening in the relationship with the media. The New Creative Audience: An audience which creates and controls what it wants to see through interaction with the mass-media system.

17. 16 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi

18. 17 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi Political Events & Actors 3. Mass Communication and Media Politics Process of events-driven reporting What does not exist in the media does not exist in the public mind, even if it could have a fragmented presence in individual minds The medium is not only the message However it has substantial influence on the form and effect of the message The TV leads the process Media constitutes by and large the space where power is decided Politics is dependent on media politics: image, PR and political marketing Here, again, is a matter of trust in the candidate, the political party and the system Politics of scandal?

19. 18 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 3. Mass Communication and Media Politics George Lakoff: Issues are real, as are the facts of the matter. But issues are also symbolic of values and of trustworthiness. Effective campaigns must communicate the candidates values and use issues symbolically, as indicative of their moral values and their trustworthiness Political Events & Actors

21. The usage of a diversity of platforms

22. The customization and segmentation of audiences

24. Social media and user generated contents

25. Applications world

26. Engaging Audiences

27. From free to paid contentMedia How to monetize these networks of mass self-comm in terms of advertising?

28. 20 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi Media 3. Mass Communication and Media Politics

29. 21 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 4. The rise of mass self-communication What? The development of horizontal networks of interactive communication that connect local and global in chosen time The global web of horizontal communication includes the multimodal exchange of interactive messages from many to many both synchronous and asynchronous “Web 2.0 technologies empowered consumers to produce and distribute their own content. The viral success of these technologies propelled media organizations to harness the production power of traditional consumers” (p.87) The majors try to figure out how to re-commodify Internet-based autonomous mass self-communication Examples: pay sites, advertising, premium, freemium

30. 22 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 4. The rise of mass self-communication Why? The diffusion of Internet, mobile communication, digital media, and a variety of tools of socialsoftware With the convergence between Internet and mobile communication and the gradual diffusion of broadband capacity, the communicating power of the Internet is being distributed inall realms of social life, as the electrical grid and the electrical engine distributed energy in the industrialsociety “This gives rise to unprecedented autonomy for communicative subjects to communicate at large” (p.136) challenging corporate media concentration and cultural hegemony People can create autonomous spaces both from capital and state powers Blocking Internet access is the exception (p.204)

31. 23 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 4. The rise of mass self-communication Umberto Eco’s semiotic model of communication The creative audience: Engages the interactive production of meaning The figure of sender and addressee Italian professor explains that the power groups, politicians, educators, rescuers, utopians, scientists and journalists have been content to master two of the most important processes communication: the source and channel. To change the power relation among actors, Eco proposed a silent revolution, which took place just at the time and place that comes communication. The powers could control the source and the channel, but the reception of the message and its interpretation is absolutely free. The “semiological guerrilla” would aim to complement the communication processes and discuss the message with the audience Along with the reinterpretation, appear non-industrial forms of communication that would not be contaminated by political corruption

32. 24 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 4. The rise of mass self-communication The guerrilla strategy is valid as long as the communication was vertical and hierarchical, but the globalization of information and telecommunications has substantially changed the picture The new guerrilla 2.0. is not only a reinterpretation of the messages, but in the self development of informational messages Blogs, mailing lists, magazines alternative change the paradigm of communication, to the extent that for the first time in history, senders do not need intermediaries to recover the conversation Mainstream media has less market value Special mention of Wikipedia, open-access encyclopedia written and updated by internet users who give their time writing articles from altruistic. There is no editor (although one reviewer of texts) to indicate the timing and direction of the collaboration, but that everyone writes about what he knows and his way

33. 25 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 4. The rise of mass self-communication Three final remarks: It reaches potentially a global audience through the p2p networks and Internet connection It is multimodal, as the digitization of content and advanced social software, allows the reformatting of almost any content in almost any form, increasingly distributed via wireless networks It is self-generated in content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many that communicate with many

34. 26 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 4. The rise of mass self-communication JürgenHabermas critiques this theory based on what democracy means Public sphere is still dominated by mediated communication The power of the agenda setting function The power of framing Do Internet and New Media counterbalance the current deficit in democracy and technology? Internet reactivates the grassroots of an egalitarian public Internet as a danger of the “fragmentation of large but politically focused mass audience into a huge number o isolated issue publics” (p.423) Moreover, the web is mediated communication Most of political discussion is around the focal points of the quality press

35. 27 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 4. The rise of mass self-communication Frank Webster sees more problems on apathy and civic disengagement ICT are not the primary solution to the problem of disillusion with democratic politics Social information is a prerequisite of democracy + access to knowledge Technology on its own is never sufficient to improve things when it comes to informational matters Why? There are too much information-gathering activities of state agencies Example: libraries and public service television

36. 28 Juan Luis Manfredi, Ph.D @juanmanfredi 5. Conclusions Power relations in the new communication space Business Media Strategies Electoral Politics in the Age of the Multimodal Internet GrassRoots Politics and the New Media: more civic engagement