Media and politics… 11/3/04 3:11 pm Page 1 I S SUE S in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES I S SUE S in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES SERIES EDITOR: STUART ALLAN Hassan Robert Hassan 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. Media, Politics Media, Politics 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 Media, Communications at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University, Australia. He has written numerous articles on the nature of the network society from the and the perspectives of temporality, political economy and media theory, and is author of The Chronoscopic Society (2003). Network Society Cover illustration: Charlotte Combe Politics and the Cover design: Barker/Hilsdon -2 Network Society www.openup.co.uk ISBN 0-335-21315-4 0 9 780335 213153 MEDIA, POLITICS AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY ISSUES in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES Series Editor: Stuart Allan Published titles News Culture Moral Panics and the Media Stuart Allan Chas Critcher Modernity and Postmodern Culture Cities and Urban Cultures Jim McGuigan Deborah Stevenson Sport, Culture and the Media, 2nd edition Cultural Citizenship David Rowe Nick Stevenson Television, Globalization and Cultural Culture on Display Identities Bella Dicks Chris Barker Critical Readings: Media and Gender Ethnic Minorities and the Media Edited by Cynthia Carter and Edited by Simon Cottle Linda Steiner Cinema and Cultural Modernity Critical Readings: Media and Audiences Gill Branston Edited by Virginia Nightingale and Karen Ross Compassion, Morality and the Media Keith Tester Media and Audiences Karen Ross and Virginia Nightingale Masculinities and Culture John Beynon Critical Readings: Sport, Culture and the Media Cultures of Popular Music Edited by David Rowe Andy Bennett Rethinking Cultural Policy Media, Risk and Science Jim McGuigan Stuart Allan Media, Politics and the Network Society Violence and the Media Robert Hassan Cynthia Carter and C. Kay Weaver 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: [email protected]. 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 1 || WHAT IS THE NETWORK SOCIETY? 8 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 2 || THE INFORMATIONIZATION OF MEDIA AND CULTURE 33 So what is ‘media’ and what is ‘culture’ anyway? 34 Media 34 Culture 36 viii || MEDIA, POLITICS AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY 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 3 || ADDICTED TO DIGITAL: THE WIRED WORLD 55 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 4 || LIFE.COM 79 ‘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 5 || CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY 100 The colonization of civil society 100 A global political movement for the age of globalization 105 The politics of technopolitics 112 Further reading 115 6 || TACTICAL MEDIA 116 Tactical media in action 119 Culturejamming 120 Warchalking 121 Digital direct action 123 Further reading 125 7 || A NETWORKED CIVIL SOCIETY? 126 Neoliberal globalization today 127 CONTENTS || ix 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 SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD A new world is beginning to take shape before our eyes, the world of the ‘network society’ to use Manuel Castells’ evocative phrase. Social theorists such as Castells argue that the network society is the social structure of the Information Age, being made up of networks of production, power and experience. Its prevailing logic, while constantly challenged by social conflicts, nevertheless informs social action and institutions throughout what is an increasingly interdependent world. The Internet, he points out, ‘is the technological tool and organizational form that distributes information power, knowledge generation and networking capacity in all realms of activity’. As a result, he adds, to be ‘disconnected, or superficially connected, to the Internet is tantamount to marginalization in the global, networked system. Development without the Internet would be the equivalent of industrialization without electricity in the industrial era.’ It follows, then, that the use of information by the powerful as a means to reinforce, even exacerbate, their structural hegemony is a pressing political concern. Celebratory claims about the ‘global village’ engendered by new media technologies ring hollow, especially when it is acknowledged that the majority of the world’s population have never even made a telephone call, let along logged on to a computer. Critical attention 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 constitutes its life-blood. The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution that has shaped this process from the outset, he maintains, did not emerge in a political, economic or cultural vacuum. Rather, it is inextricably tied to the cultural dynamics of ‘neoliberal globalization’ as an ideological force, one that is changing the role and nature of the media in modern SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD || xi societies. Accordingly, a number of emergent struggles over who owns and controls access to the very infrastructure of the network society are examined here. ICTs, Hassan suggests, are serving as the weapons of choice for a new generation of activists intent on rewiring the network society in more politically progressive terms. Through new forms of ‘technopolitics’, fresh ideas are being generated and collectively negotiated with an eye to launching global protests and boycotts, of which the impact on everyday life is remarkably profound at times. In assessing the issues at stake for cultural and media studies, Hassan argues that the first decade of the twenty-first century is witnessing the beginnings of a critical, ‘informationized’ resistance to the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism – not least, as he shows, from within the network society itself. The Issues in Cultural and Media Studies series aims to facilitate a diverse range of critical investigations into pressing questions considered to be central to current thinking and research. In light of the remarkable speed at which the conceptual agendas of cultural and media studies are changing, the series is committed to contri- buting to what is an ongoing process of re-evaluation and critique. Each of the books is intended to provide a lively, innovative and comprehensive introduction to a specific topical issue from a fresh perspective. The reader is offered a thorough grounding in the most salient debates indicative of the book’s subject, as well as important insights into how new modes of enquiry may be established for future explorations. Taken as a whole, then, the series is designed to cover the core components of cultural and media studies courses in an imaginatively distinctive and engaging manner.