Two major communication scholars, Manuel Castells and Jan Van Dijk have worked during the last 16 years to explain and define what the network society is. And what’s come to mind immediately today to young adults about network society, refers more to social networks or social media as the so-called website, Facebook. Notwithstanding, the network society has many roots that Van Dijk identified as the individual, organization and societal areas that have been shaped by the combination of media and social networks and changed its basic mode of organization and structures (van Dijk, 2006).
Understanding the word “network” is a pre-requisite in the knowledge of what embrace the expression “network society”. In Jan Van Dijk’s book “the network society” (2006), a network is defined “as a collection of links between elements of a unit”. The term elements refer to “nodes” and unit is sometimes called “systems”. Castells (1996) explained that a node “depends on the kind of concrete networks of which we speak”, as this podcast focus on the example of sustainable development, a node could be the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Europe. Moreover, a network is a link that binds up at least three nodes while just a link between two people or companies is defined as a simple relationship.
First of all, Castells explained in his book “The network society” the concept of a global economy in the context of a network society. Actually, the global economy is based on major activities such as money, production systems or information “to work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale… because of the existence of an infrastructure of telecommunications, information systems, and fast transportation systems that provide the technological capacity for the system to work as a unit on a global scale” (Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, 2001). Let’s take an example in sustainable development with the “Agriculture 2.0”. This term has been the title of a conference hold in Palo Alto, California, in March 2010, in which venture capitalists of the Silicon Valley and sustainable agriculture start-ups were bringing together. The goal of this conference was that venture capitalists can help industrial agriculture by using information technology. This would help to connect consumers and producers to one another because they have the technology as computers, energy industries and entertainment, to invest in sustainable agriculture (Woody, 2010). In the conference, it has been highlighted there is no connection between consumers and local farmers, and the result is that food producers often “remain in the dark about what the market is demanding” (Woody, 2010). In providing technological capacity to the agricultural system, it will be possible to link consumers and producers, as the start-up FarmsReach in San Francisco does, in developing an online market to connect farmers to local buyers like restaurants.
This link between consumers, producers and capitalists is defined by Castells with the term “world of interdependence”. He illustrated this interdependence in referring to the European Union. He explained that European countries pooled their sovereignty “so that together they could have some level of bargaining power and some leverage to control global flows of wealth, information, and power” (Castells, 2001). Here we have an example of “a network of interactions… a world of interdependence, of nation states sharing sovereignty” (Castells, 2001). It is possible to exemplify this network with the Agenda 21 initiative that gives some recommendations for the 21st century, in various fields as the reduction of poverty, health or the pollution of the atmosphere. In 1992 has been hold the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where 178 Governments of the United Nations Systems engaged in the Agenda 21, to take global, national and local action in every kind of area in which human beings affect the environment (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2009). It is important to highlight that 80% of the Agenda 21 are situated in Europe. Networks of collectivities are created in order to cooperate and shared efforts to reach the goals of this initiative, as the Comity 21 that connect them to one another. This leads to say that the exchange between those collectivities is a prerequisite to reinforce and gather power of the different European communities.
Another essential point in the network society is about the mass society and its mass media tools that have started to be dissolved through the convergence of the media process in our modern network society (van Dijk, 2005). Van Dijk explained the fundamental differences between the mass society and the network society. The main component of the last one is that the individuals are linked through the use of networks in a “Glocal” scope (both global and local). This is done in diverse virtual types of communities with an increasingly mediated type of communication and a high use of different media. The society shifted from a vertical bureaucracy to a horizontal “infocracy” (van Dijk, 2006) in which it is possible to centralize execution and manage the decision-making process at the same time. This is because the new communication and information technologies can adjust and manage all levels of complexity within the network in a real time (Castells, 2000). This enhances the fact that our current network society has been made possible through the use of new communication and information technologies. Notwithstanding, it does not refer to technological determinism, but more to the fact that without those information technologies, the evolution that has conducted to social transformation were unlikely to happen.
As this infocracy is defined according to the rise of the information technologies, “it has enabled organizations, states and societies to work without the constraints of time and space” (van Dijk, 2005). The Internet is a major tool in this change. It has transformed those important dimensions of human beings life that has finally created new cultural identity in which “the space of flows and timeliness time” are its material foundations (Castells, 1996). This new culture is characterised by “the peaceful coexistence of various interests and cultures in the net took the form of the World Wide Web (WWW), a flexible network of networks within the Internet” (Castells, 1996). This cultural characteristic leads to Castells’ argument about globalisation, that the network society is a “global capitalist society” (Flew, 2008). In this globalisation process, different oppositional movement has raised in the form of resistance entities (Flew, 2008), as are sometimes ecological movements. The limit they encounter is they would like to fight the globalisation system but are dependent on the decisions of what and who they oppose to have to capacity to grow over time.
Earlier in this paper, the term convergence has been used. On one hand, for Castells (1996), it is one of the five origins of the network society. On the other hand, in the network society defined by van Dijk (2006), “technologies of telecommunication, data communication and mass communication” are the ground of the term convergence in which those tools have created “one single digital communications infrastructure”. Convergence is a way to link online and offline communications using several media for instance Internet, mobile phones, and blogs to broadcast messages to audiences and particularly mass audiences. According to Ben Verwaayen, the CEO of British Telecom, convergence “really means the freedom for consumers to use any service under any circumstances they choose to” (The Economist, 2006). It is possible to add what Henry Jenkins argued: “convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” (Jenkins, 2006). Let’s take an example in sustainable development. Convergence could be exemplified in the broadcasting of two movies, the first one is “Home”, at the movies in 2007, and the second one is “The Cove”, in 2009. The first one was firstly a movie, broadcasted in cinemas, then available for free on the Internet. Then, a website was created about the movie and how to take action through online found raising, and other tools as blogs, a calculator to know what is your carbon footprint, and an iPhone app to gather sustainable news day after day. In the second example, “The Cove” has pushed forward the convergence principle in linking the movie’s website to the major online actor about sustainable development “Take Part.com”. They propose a way to link online and offline communication in proposing “to write to our leaders”, to send a text-message to the website in order to regularly receive information about how you could help. Convergence is here very useful because people can share what they learn in forwarding videos and the film's trailer to their friends via email or straight to their phones.
This last example is a path to say that the ongoing mutation of communication technology has offered the means to communication media to affect the entire domain of social life in a network that is local and global at the same time (Castells, 2007). The social life in the network society is characterised in some aspects by social network and social media. This is an evolution that Castells had foreseen in 1996 and from which we can now say that the social part in the network society is becoming a synonym of participation. This has changed the media landscape (The Economist, 2009) in which media are globally interconnected and networks are considered as a social morphology (Flew, 2008). Let’s now explain what define social networking. It defines social interactions through computer-mediated communication in which virtual communities can be created. Rheingold has coined the term “virtual communities” and explained it as “a self-defined electronic network of interactive communication organized around a shared interest or purpose” (Castells, 1996). It is possible to go deeper in speaking about social media that are made by the people for the people. Today, everybody has a chance to make its own media, thanks to tools like blogs, videos sharing and podcasts. Moreover, people have the chance to play a role in providing feedback, and promote what they like, “social media means new opportunities to create and communicate with people that care” (CommonCraft, 2008). This is all about participation. In the sustainable development field, participation doesn’t have the same form as in social media. People and most of all the Internet users do not rate actions or show their support to companies, NGOs or websites in the same way. It is another form of participation that is taking action and aware people about what is going on on our planet, to our planet and to people. In April this year, a new French movie “Local solutions for a global disorder” (translated from the French name “Solutions locales pour un désordre global”) will be broadcasted about agriculture, pollution, poverty and other key issues of sustainable development. As for “The Cove” and “Home”, the website of the movie proposes ideas and solutions about those problems, and is a means to raise funds. Recently, the characteristics of social media have started to match those of sustainable development. For instance, on the websites of those movies, the Internet users can share it on Facebook or on Twitter. To bind up social networks and media to the network society is necessary to understand what is socially happening in sustainable development within a network context.
To conclude, the network society is a term that defined exactly the 21st century. In the sustainable development field, globalisation offers the possibility to aware people and act in societies both economically and socially. A new culture has started to be created: “we have entered a purely cultural pattern of social interaction and social organization” (Castells, 1996) in the information age that is no more new but a sine qua non condition to think globally and act locally.
References:
Dijk van, Jan (2005). Outline of a Multilevel Approach of the Network Society. In: Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, May 26-30, 2005, New York City, NY. http://doc.utwente.nl/59818/1/Dijk05outline.pdf
Castells, M. (2000). The contours of the network society. The journal of futures studies, strategic thinking and policy , 2 (2).
Castells, M. (1996). The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol.I: The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Flew, T. (2008). New media: an introduction. South melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.
Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley. (2001, May 9). The Network Society and Organizational Change. Retrieved from Conversation with history: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con4.html
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.
The Economist. (2009, October 20-21). Did you know: The pace of change. Retrieved from Media Convergence Forum: http://mediaconvergence.economist.com/content/video
The Economist. (2006, October 12). SURVEY: TELECOMS CONVERGENCE. Retrieved from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=7995312
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2009). Agenda 21. Retrieved from United Nations: http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
van Dijk, J. (2006). The network society : social aspects of new media (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications.
Woody, T. (2010, March 26). Silicon Valley investors place bets on sustainable ag. Retrieved from Grist: http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-26-silicon-valley-investorsvcs-ready-to-make-bets-on-sustainable-ag/
CommonCraft. (2008, May 28). Social Media in Plain English. Retrieved from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE&feature=PlayList&p=FB9821322A771F06&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1
Serreau, C. (Director). (2010). Solutions locales pour un désordre global [Motion Picture]. http://www.solutionslocales-lefilm.com/synopsis
