Fuchs Ch. 4 — Social Media and Communication Power
This chapter discusses power as it relates to society, the Internet and social media. Fuchs’ approach to this chapter is through a critique of one of the highest regarded authors in media studies, Manuel Castells, and his concept of communication power in the realm of social media. Fuchs’ main goal is to contribute to the creation of critical theory of social media, which he claims the current approaches are insufficient.
Boiled down, Castells’ “social theory” highlights the importance of the Internet and social media in a network society. Fuchs criticizes Castells in his lack of definition for network society, amongst other coined terms. He critiques Castells for skipping over defining what is society in the context of his discussion. Additionally, he is against Castells’ use of language, saying he blends the difference between society and technology. Though I appreciate Fuchs’s thoroughness, I think we can define the network society as our relationships and connections on and off the internet. In this context, our network society takes place on the Internet in a huge web of connections. A network society, in my opinion, can be clearly illustrated by social media. One Facebook user has a personal web and everything connecting to that web has another web and so on. Soon enough we have a giant network that is used to facilitate things such as ideas and discussion amongst millions of others.
Social media is described to play the role of mass self-communication. When we actively engage with social media, we are participating in mass self-communication. It is defined as such, because our content that we produce has a potential to reach an international audience.
Castells stresses the importance of power on the success of a network society. His theory around power is one of coercion and dominance in order to promote shifts or change. One of the concepts of asymmetrical dominance is mass self-communication. Castells says that while subjects are able to see the powerful, the powerful have the ability to regulate the way we mass self-communicate to their interest. This concept is shown through privately owned companies, such as Facebook. We see the ways that our participation benefits the powerful and by continuing to use, the powerful has the ability to regulate and even change the way we communicate for the interest of the company.
As I read, I began to feel as though there could never be balanced in powers between the users and the creators of social media platforms. Fuchs sums this up by saying, “ Contemporary social media is a field of power struggles in which dominant actors command a large share of economic, political and ideological media power that can be challenged by alternative actors that have less resources, visibility and attention, but try to make best use of the unequal share of media power they are confronted with in order to fight against the dominant powers” ( Fuchs, 96). Though exhausting, this shows that those participating in the dominant power’s own creation, can have a voice. That being said, there are much more ways the corporate operators ultimately win in the power struggle. An example he gives is that, during the Egyptian revolution, the state monitored activists on social media and ended up shutting down the Internet as a whole. This is an explicit abuse of power that shows just how unequal these powers can be. This backfired, however causing more outrage and more physical involvement because the Internet had been taken out of the picture.
On that note, much of the data found supported that activists valued the use of social media for mobilization. Especially now we have seen a rise in social movements across the internet, taking life on social media platforms. I think people now look for these groups as participation in a bigger movement, without much engagement except for their support in the form of a ‘like’. Castells stays firm to his belief that the Internet itself can cause change. He uses the example of Occupy Wall Street. He says that the movement came about because of the Internet and would not have survived without it. He places the mobilization of movements such as these as the Internets sole responsibility.
Fuchs critiques Castells’ views by saying that it implies that without Internet, there would be no street protests. “Castells fails to see that it is not the Internet that creates sociality, but human actors who are embedded in antagonistic economic, political and ideological structures of society. The Internet is a techno-social system consisting of social networks that make use of a global network of computer systems” (Fuchs, 100). I believe Fuchs’ criticism is an attempt to distance the human from the machine in order to see them as separate parts that work together. I agree with Fuchs in this area. Without humans and our social complexities, the use of social media for activism would not exist. How could it? We are the reason any event or problem is occurring in the first place. The Internet is a tool used to further engage and help our society-created problems.
Fuchs’ critique on Castells’ theories and concepts was interesting to read and caused me to think through abstraction and in detail. I think it was informative material that could be used to further the creation of the foundation in which to talk about social media and the theories surrounding it. Though frustrating at times, it is important to be aware of the asymmetrical power of social media and our role as participants.
Works cited:
Fuchs, C. (2017). Social Media: a critical introduction. Sage Publications, 2017.
