Access denied: the politics of new communications media

The internet as a new communications media in many ways challenges traditional distinctions between media production and consumption. As such it represents a fascinating new site for the study of the dialectic of encoding and decoding of media messages, and the political implications of such developments. However, such potential is premised upon access to new forms of technology and, as such, new forms of inequality and exclusion are generated and reinforced, again an area of critical social scienti®c research and analysis. Added to this are issues related to state and corporate attempts to control both the production and distribution of electronically mediated materials, both within and between state jurisdictions. The paper proposed here is based on research carried out by the Kent University Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing``British Library Ethnographic Research on Bibliographic Services'' (BLERBS) project into new information media and their social and political implications. The research focus is both on power relations and the creative and strategic uses of the internet in the context of the presently intensifying contradiction between communication as commodity and communication as cultural exchange.

2012

This paper is an introduction to tripleC's special section "Critical Theory and Political Economy of the Internet" that presents papers from a session at The conference's overall topic was "Media and Communication Studies -Doing the Right Thing?". The question that our panel asked was related to this overall question, but we reformulated it somewhat: "Internet Studies -Doing the Critical Thing?". The question we were interested to discuss was what it means to study the Internet critically. This certainly requires an understanding of the concept of "critical" and a conception of what Critical Media and Communication Studies is all about.

Dijital Evrenin Yeni İletişim Kodları II , 2022

The emergence of new communication technologies in the 1990s catalyzed a shift in global power dynamics and societal aspirations towards democracy and peace. Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis, proposing the convergence of free markets and democracy, coincided with the rise of new media technologies, reshaping political discourse. This article investigates whether new media innovation signals the culmination of history or signifies a new chapter in the information society. By exploring the reinvention of labor, value, and tools in the transition to an information society, the study examines the socio-economic implications of new communication technologies. Furthermore, it delves into the relationship between technology, science, and politics, analyzing historical events like the Berlin Blockade and the development of ARPANET. The study also scrutinizes the consequences of innovation on policy, particularly focusing on patent laws and ownership rights. Ultimately, the article concludes that while new media innovation disrupts established orders and fosters social transformation, it does not signify the end of history. Rather, it underscores the ongoing evolution of societal structures and power dynamics in the information age, where technology plays a central role in shaping human interaction, values, and consciousness.

Popular Communication The International Journal of Media and Culture, 2014

This paper examines prevailing institutional norms that are visible in international policy discourse concerning the goals of investing in digital technologies. An analysis of policy discourse associated with the World Summit on the Information Society shows how, despite the use of terms such as ‘open’ and ‘participatory’, the practice of ICT project implementation displays evidence of failures to empower local people. The discussion is framed by the lessons about asymmetrical institutionalized power from theories concerned with the dynamics of techno-economic change as contrasted with the prevailing market- led technology diffusion perspective. The context for the paper is the experience of contributing to a high-level policy report for UNESCO’s 2013 review of progress towards knowledge societies. Examples drawn from digital technology applications are used to illustrate the asymmetrical power relations embedded in these developments.

Matrizes, 2009

Este artigo examina de maneira crítica alguns dos argumentos e contra-argumentos direcionados à Sociedade da Informação. É dada especial atenção às origens da visão predominante sobre sociedades que são cada vez mais dependentes de tecnologias da informação e da comunicação e do processamento de informações. Embora alguns pensadores entendam que esse fato está intimamente associado com sociedades cada vez mais informadas, o presente artigo destaca algumas das perspectivas mais críticas a esse respeito. Questiona-se também se, à luz da expansão da Internet e como celeiro de novas plataformas digitais, haveria evidência de alguma mudança sustentável nas relações de poder que pudesse gerar maior igualdade. Abstct This paper critically examines some of the claims and counterclaims about the Information Society. It gives particular attention to the origins of the predominant vision of societies that are every more dependent on information and communication technologies and the processing of information. Though some assume that this is intimately associated with increasingly knowledgeable societies, this paper highlights some of the more critical perspectives on this view. It also considers whether, in the light of the spread of the Internet and as host of new digital platforms, there is evidence of any sustainable shift in power relations that might yield greater equality

This thesis examines the potential of and limits to the use of the Internet as a public sphere. To this end it considers the claim that the Internet is or can be a public sphere. To do this there are two related spheres of enquiry: the ‘public sphere’ and ‘the Internet’. The enquiry into the concept of the public sphere is based on an engagement with the work of Jürgen Habermas. The concern of this thesis is to draw on the wider corpus of Habermas’s work to develop a model of the public sphere that takes account of his thesis of ‘colonisation’. Because the process of colonisation results in systemically distorted communication the liberal model of the public sphere is replaced with a model of a ‘radical’ public sphere. These two concepts, the radical public sphere and colonisation then form the basis for the investigation into the potential of the Internet. The Internet, like other technologies, cannot, however, be considered in abstraction of its use. Therefore, a theory of ‘forms of use’ is developed, through which the potential of and limits to media can be analysed. Different case studies are presented in order to show how these different forms of use of the Internet can be supported. However, we can understand that certain ‘systemic’ colonising forms of use of the Internet threaten the functioning of other, radical forms of use. The limits to the use of the Internet as a public sphere are not, however, inherent features of the technology itself, but pertain to its use under a system in which certain social practices and institutions have priority over others. Under these conditions, the use of the Internet as a radical public sphere takes place as a continual struggle against dominant forms of use.

This book is very timely and absolutely gets the agenda right. The field of media and communications research needs to address the complexity of media as a process of mediation in which new and old technologies, as well as their producers and consumers, in various ways combine and interact. This book provides both evidence and argument to enable this new agenda. Roger Silverstone (15 June 1945 - 16 July 2006), Professor of Media and Communications and Convenor of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE (London School of Economics). The book you have in your hands will be widely used and read in universities and professional media organizations throughout the world, because it is one of the few, and best examples of understanding the relationship between the media and the Internet in the broader context of our transition to the network society. It exposes the logic that is currently shaping the communicative fabric of our lives. Manuel Castells, Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication Technology and Society Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. This is a comprehensive look at the role of information technology in the transition to a network society. It is also the most broadly comparative study I have seen. No scholar in this growing field will want to miss this book. It will become a standard work and a primary reference in the field. Lance Bennett is Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor Communication and Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Media Culture and Society, 2013

International Journal of Media &# 38; Cultural …, 2005

The vision of communication systems supporting public sphere(s) of discursive contestation has in recent times been embraced by many critical theorists as the ideal democratic role for the media. However, there has also been much pessimism about the realization of this vision. This pessimism extends from 'big brother' fears to hyperrealist scenarios -from the development of a global surveillance society to the implosion of reality in an electronically generated and sustained system of pure fabrication.