The Network Society is a clear, engaging guide to the past, consequences and future of digital communication, and forms a comprehensive introduction to how new media functions in contemporary society.
Integrating both face-to-face and online communication, the fourth edition explores crucial new issues and challenges in today’s digital media ecology, in doing so exploring the centrality of power to understanding life in the network society. Featuring:
- The rise of the ‘data economy’
- The increasing importance of artificial intelligence. big data and robotics
- The growth of Internet platforms and how to regulate big tech.
- New coverage of disinformation and fake news, including deep fake videos
- Updates to the story of digital youth culture, as a foreshadow of future new media use
With examples, cases and real-world applications, this is the essential guide for digital and new media students seeking to understand a diverse, fast-moving field.
About the Author
Jan A.G.M. van Dijk (1952) is emeritus professor of communication science and sociology of the information society and still working at the University of Twente, the Netherlands.
His main domains of research are the social aspects of the digital media, digital democracy and the digital divide. His best known English books are
The Network Society (Four Editions, Sage Publications),
Digital Democracy (2000, Sage Publications),
The Deepening Divide (2005, Sage Publications),
Digital Skills (2014, Palgrave Macmillan),
Internet and Democracy (2018, Routledge) and
The Digital Divide (2020, Polity Press). Since the year 2020 he is working on an overall work called Power & Technology, combining theories of social and natural power explaining the use of technology in human history. During his long career he was an advisory of many governments and departments as well as the European Commission.
Industry Reviews
This 4th edition provides interdisciplinary insight into the growing significance of digital media in society. It comprehensively explains why the process of becoming a network society varies worldwide as a result of differing values and responses to the emergence of varied structures, processes and control systems. -- Robin Mansell
This fourth edition of Jan A.G.M. van Dijk's classic book, The Network Society, clarifies and analyses a wide variety of crucial concepts and contemporary practices, with insight, clarity, analysis, and critique, as well as examples, boxed explanations, and conclusions for each chapter. Topics include social values, digital media capacities, multimedia, network theory, medium theory, network society, technological foundations, platform economy, space and time, social media, digital divide, network power, privacy, digital culture, social psychology of online communication, platform regulation, intellectual property rights, global and developing network societies, and policy perspectives. This is a necessary and accessible textbook for understanding the age of digital networks. -- Ronald E. Rice
The publication of the 4th edition of Professor Van Dijk's The Network Society speaks volumes for its value across multiple disciplines. This new edition updates his refreshingly global perspective on the growing psychological, cultural, economic and other social issues shaping the future of policy and practice in our increasingly digital world. -- William H. Dutton
