Manuel Castells is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) in Barcelona. He is also University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Currently, Castells is a trustee of the California Institute of the Arts and is a member of the governing board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Communication Power is the title of his latest research book in English, which has now been translated into Spanish and Catalan. On the event of this recent publication, we had the opportunity to speak to this communications expert.
How did the idea to write a book about communication and power develop?
The underlying theme of all my research over the last three decades is power, but I could not determine what the main construction process of power relationships was in society. In the end, during the analysis I developed in writing my trilogy on the information age, I reached the conclusion that power is built, above all, on communication. To develop this intuition I undertook in-depth, empirical and theoretical research which has taken me ten years and which led to the final draft of the book in 2006-2008.
In your book you surprise the reader with an analysis of the brain, emotions and feelings. What is the reason for this immersion into the world of neural networks and sensory perceptions?
Because if my hypothesis is that the essential form of power is the influence exercised on people?s minds and that this influence is built using the communication environment from where we receive signals that activate our behaviour, I had to somehow understand how these neural networks in the brain connect with the communication networks through which we perceive the world.
Is power the power of affective communication over rational communication?
Power is exercised through the construction of reality in our brain. And the brain, for reasons linked to the evolution of the species and studied in neuroscience, is driven, initially, by emotions that are expressed in feelings organised by the conscious decision process. Power is built by cognitive action which activates emotions, feelings and decision processes in our brains, within its social communication environment.
If power is built in the area of communication, what is the state?s role?
The state, as the highest form of organisation of power in society, regulates the area of communication to maintain the power relationships within it. However, this regulation depends on the ever-changing relation of power relationships within the state, because at the same time as there being a domination of certain interests and groups there is also resistance according to other interests and values, as well as commitments between different social actors. The result of these power relationships determines the regulation of communication by the state ? one of the most important ways of exercising its power.
In the current digital age, what is the media?s situation?
The continuous inclusion of every one of us in a multi-module world of communication, which we never leave, has intensified. But together with mass communication which is predominantly one-way and controlled by governments and large media groups, there is now an expansion of mass self-communication via the Internet. This has enabled a horizontal and interactive communication which is barely controlled by large political and economic organisations despite them dominating telecommunications.
Thanks to free communication networks such as the Internet, can it be said that people are becoming the journalists of the world?
Absolutely, although more than journalists (a regulated profession) people are becoming informers, analysts and opinion leaders. In this regard, journalists have lost the monopoly on information, but have won freedom from their companies because they can rely on public networks that work continuously against censorship. An alliance is being created between citizen journalists and journalist citizens.
What type of link exists between the media and society?s worldwide mistrust of political institutions?
Politics is essentially media-related and therefore adopts the media language characterised by the logic of entertainment and scandal to gain audience. Therefore, political messages are simplified, politics is personalised and negative politics is generalised based on the denigration of the opposition. All this leads to a discrediting of political leaders and undermines the public?s trust in their representatives. However, it is not the media that creates the scandals, but the politicians, using the media for their own purposes, in collusion with the interests of the media to gain audience.
In your book you say that all power generates an opposing resistance, a counter- power. The 13 and 14 March mobilisations and Obama?s election campaign are examples of this. What are the common factors of these initiatives which led to such a high level of participation by the public?
Free, mass self-communication. Mass use of the internet and mobile communications to introduce information and debates, not controlled by large media companies, enabled the spontaneous self-organisation and mobilisation of the people.
Are we looking at a revolution of media democracy?
Without a doubt there is a significant transformation in the relationship between communication and power, based on people?s capacity to create their own communication networks and to organise shared projects without the need of mediation by dominant economic or political groups. The unstoppable mobilisation in Iran, in spite of a bloodstained repression that has gone on for months, is a revealing example of the new democratising capacity of mobile-ised people.
