Power as a Key Category for the Development of Mass Communications``` Theory

Review of a Book by Rodkin P.

Abstract

The following review analyses a book of Pavel Rodkin, PhD in Arts Studies, senior lecturer at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics, “Media and society: three attempts to reveal a subject of power. Critical Essay” (published in 2016 by “Sovpadenie”, under the general editorship by T. Sergeytsev).
The book is dedicated to media researchers, interested in the topics of global media, online communications, information society and social media. The book is divided into three chapters; each of these is an attempt to reveal the subject of power from different points of view through the insights of several theories, such as neo-Marxism, the theory of elites, ideas of network society of M. Kastels, etc. P. Rodkin asserts that he does not claim a full theoretical coverage of the topic, but provides some vectors for further research.
The main line of the book is dedicated to power relations in the context of the information society, where the author makes the statement, that social media did not render power relations more transparent – indeed, social media eroded the category of power, and the real subjects of power are hardly evident in the context of information abundance.
In his critical essay, the author refers to the works of J. Keane (“Democracy and Media Decadence”), as well as to the academic works on the slacktivism of various authors [Kristofferson & White, 2014; Rotman, Vieweg, Yardi, Chi, & Preece, 2011]. The author states that a competitive economy now survives the period of crisis, so the problems of the whole system shifted to a virtual space, where they are hardly recognised in terms of information overcharge.
The book reveals questions about the relations between power and the media, and can be useful for academics, who conduct research dedicated to these topics.