Communication. Where Power Comes From.

　So, in this so-called network society, where does power come from? Who holds the power? People might say, the one who has more information. Well, it could be. Nowadays, everyone holds information and  probably some of information may have potentials to influence the world. For instance, anyone can make their own blog, express their opinions freely and share what they have with anyone in the world.

New communication technologies allowed us to have this kind of information sharing in public. It doesn't mean that the new technologies hold power, but they make and give power. It can also imply that the network society is constructed on new technologies.

Thanks for the new communication technologies, it is getting harder for mass media to control information. If the traditional mass communications were mainly one-way(vertical) giving from mainstream medias (like TV, Radio, or magazines), the new mass communications are becoming any-way giving(horizontal) and receiving type of communications. Anyone can give information and anyone can receive. It depends on individuals which information they'd take or not.

Also, information in this mass communications becomes more authentic and less influenced by controlled medias. Now people prefer authentic stories from people like themselves. Comparing to few decades ago, people tend to less trust mainstream medias. Traditionally, politics have pretty much used mainstream medias as their tools to influence public.

However, it is changing now. Politics confront eyes on them everywhere in the world. Anything about politics can be issues brought by someone who is not a journalist or an activist. Anyone can use this new communications and draw public attention. This can be good side or can be down side at the same time. How politics are going to make it beneficial to themselves?

We can easily see that many politicians use social networks these days. It seems that using social networks give them opportunities to inter-communicate with public. Also their words can be conveyed to public by public. For example, in Korea, some politicians have used Twitter and people "Retweet" these posts. So these are widespread and become issues. On Twitter, a careless word from a politician can be returned as an poisoned arrow to the politician's personal images to public.

Likewise, this new mass communication is the one who gives power to anyone or a politician. At the same time, it is the one who can take away power.

　"The growing interest of corporate media for Internet-based forms of communication is in fact the reflection of the rise of a new form of socialized communication: mass self-communication. It is mass communication because it reaches potentially a global audience through the p2p networks and Internet connection. It is multimodal, as the digitization of content and advanced social software, often based on open source that can be downloaded free, allows the reformatting of almost any content in almost any form, increasingly distributed via wireless networks. And it is self-generated in content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many that communicate with many."

(Castells, Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society, 248)