2.2 Essay: Stumpel
customised, that it is often difficult to find a onesize, fits-all definition. However, if we look at Facebook as a Network, we can look at its social and political implications and the ways in which power and resistance can be mapped. One of the main proponents of a particularly influential perspective on power and resistance in communication networks is sociologist Manuel Castells. In his book Communication Power, he is concerned with how power exists and is exercised within networks (2009). Castells argues that communication networks are the key fields of power in the network society. Much attention has been given to how the social organisation of networked communication affects global politics, the relationship between individuals and organisations or their nation-state, and protest politics. Castells defines a network as a – (..) set of interconnected nodes (..) which are – (..)in complex structures of communication, constructed around a set of goals that simultaneously ensure a unity of purpose and flexibility of execution by their adaptability to the operating environment (2009: pp. 19-21). They are constructed around a set of goals that simultaneously ensure a unity of purpose and flexibility of execution by their adaptability to the operating environment. Within Facebook, thus, we do not need to merely look at the content of the users and their practices but actually concentrate on how the users connect to each other in various stages of communication. Moreover, the connectedness is not arbitrary but is defined by a series of goals that are shared both in their vision and execution within the Facebook environment.
In other words, the Facebook user is encouraged to remain contained within the Facebook environment and doesn’t necessarily translate into real action. I point this out because popular discourse has concentrated on Facebook and spillovers of Facebook networks into the physical world. However, a look at Facebook as a network reveals that the design of Facebook is actually counter-intuitive to the resistances which are attributed to it. Even when there is a ‘re-programming’ of the interests and values of these actions, the possibilities afforded by Facebook
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to its users are infinite only as long as they subscribe to the normative operating logic of its design.
Within the framework that Castells provides, the exercising of power in networks influence society and drives societal change (2009). Individual actors in the network society are nodes which can affect – but are also affected by – power relationships that are structured by networks. Thus, we need to focus not only on how the users shape Facebook and the various practices therein but also on how the interaction with Facebook affects the users themselves. The Castellian framework helps us recognise that the construction of meaning is an essential task of contemporary media politics and that they significantly shape human minds through processes of image making. For example, when a large social networking corporation (like Facebook) introduces new features or makes changes to their SNS, it immediately becomes ‘news’ which is spread throughout the blogosphere. These news events are framed differently through different types of discourse. This discourse in return coerces the user to behave in a particular design within the Facebook environment. It might lead to mobilisation of networks to protest the change, but this resistance is contained within the Facebook environment and in fact increases the power capabilities of the network.
Network(ed) resistance If all resistance, is thus, only granted by the network and is in fact influenced and shaped by the network, is there a way by which true resistance can be materialised within these networks? Castells offers the notion of counter-power – the capacity of social actors to challenge and eventually change power relations institutionalised in the network – as a solution. Castells suggests that power relies on the control of communication and counter-power depends on breaking of this control. Thus reprogramming needs to be understood, not merely as producing subversive content which adds to the power of the network, but