INFORMATION SOCIETY

1
INFORMATION SOCIETY

• INFORMATION SOCIAL EXCLUSIONModule code
  SM1061N Lecture 2 12 February, 2008
• Maykel Perez

2
INFORMATION SOCIETY

• New socio-economic system, novel type of society,
  new social order
• Informatisation of social life
• Knowledge society
• Neo-liberal consensus

3
INFORMATION SOCIETY

• Change vs. Continuity
• Technological change vs Societal Change

OTHER DIVISIONS

• Advocates vs. Critics
• Different focus of Analysis

4
INFORMATION SOCIETY
DIFFERENT FOCUS OF ANALYSIS

• Divisions
• Schiller data deprivation
• Pippa Norris Digital Divide
• Surveillance
• Foucault (Panopticism)
• Democracy
• Habermas (public sphere)

5
HERBERT SCHILLER

• Political Economy approach to communication and
  information

6
Political Economy approach to information and
communication

• Focus on structural features behind the message
• Systemic analysis of information
• Interest in power, control, interests.

7
Political Economy approach to information and
communication

• Four arguments are given special emphasis
• Pertinence of market criteria in information
  developments
• Commodification of Information
• Class inequalities as a major factor in the
  distribution of, access to, and capacity to
  generate information.
• The corporate capitalism control over information

8
Corporate Interests shaping the Information
Society

• Information developed to suit corporate
  interests, though in the process corporations
  have become increasingly reliant on information
  flows
• Concentration of power in the hands of a few
  trans-national corporation
• Corporations have increasing political powers.
  Become powerful interest groups

9
MARKET CRITERIA

• Market principles, most emphatically the search
  for profit maximisation, shape the information
  realm

10
COMMODIFICATION OF INFORMATION

• Commodification of information with only symbolic
  value
• Commodification of information that has a value
  beyond any individual interest for profit.

11
CLASS INEQUALITIES

• Information and ICT made available to those best
  able to play for them.

12
Giddens Surveillance, Reflexive Societies, and
Nation States.
13
INFORMATION AND THE ORGANISATION OF MODERN SOCIETY

• SURVEILLANCE OF SOCIETY BY INDIVIDUALS, SOCIAL
  GROUPS, CITIZENS. (Reflexive society)
• SURVEILLANCE OF SOCIETY BY THE STATE.

14
REFLEXIVE MODERNISATION

• Life is increasingly disembedded
• Growing refusal to accept destiny or fate

POST TRADITIONAL SOCIETY

• Increased surveillance so we may develop
  knowledge upon which may be made choices about
  ourselves and the sort of society we want

15
INFORMATION AND THE ORGANISATION OF MODERN SOCIETY

• The world in which we live is much more organised
  than before
• Our lives are planned and arranged in
  unprecedented ways. Life is systematically managed

To organise life information must be
systematically gathered on people and their
activities. Routine surveillance is a
prerequisite of effective social organisation