Robin Mansell

The London School of Economics and Political Science | LSE · Department of Media and Communications

This book is an impressive survey of our collective and cumulative understanding of the evolution of digital communication systems and the Internet. Whilst the information societies of the twenty-first century will develop ever more sophisticated technologies, the Internet is now a familiar and pervasive part of the world in which we live, work, an...

Engages in scholarship across the East-West divide Contributes to global debates that foster an inclusive international information and communication order Highlights eight prominent scholarly research traditions that have attracted scholars' interest worldwide

This paper examines the consistency of mass individualization or “personalization” techniques used by digital platforms with the imaginaries and logics of neoclassical economic theory and behavioral economics. We identify limitations of contemporary policy and regulatory responses to harms associated with datafication practices. We argue that more...

This paper examines myths envisaging a “balancing” of commercial, state and citizen interests through a market-led adjustment process underpinned by regulatory interventions in digital technology markets. It considers how these myths operate to downplay or conceal a persistent commitment to digital innovation that privileges the interests of techno...

What risks arise with a turn to epistemologies and methodologies of science (data science, cultural analytics, web science or data analytics) in research aimed at critically examining the datafied world? This chapter reflects on the consequences of deploying these approaches and on whether they sustain a normative agenda invariably aligned with the...

This chapter offers a reconsideration of the historic significance of the 1980 MacBride Report—UNESCO’s International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems: Many Voices, One World. The Report is argued to have embraced a spirit of hopefulness about possibilities for a better world, and the chapter highlights the importance of public in...

This study explores the social imaginaries influencing choices about the architectural design and standards for the 5G mobile network to identify how the network level of the communication infrastructure is implicated in the commercial datafication process. We focus on ambitions to establish global market leadership in the provision of the 5G infra...

Innovation in digital technologies is central to contemporary debates about the need for policy and regulatory adjustment in response to the consequences of the centrality of these technologies in contemporary societies. Christopher Freeman's research in relation to changes in techno-economic paradigm and, specifically, in relation to the informati...

This Advanced Introduction provides an analysis of digital platforms and their influence on society. It looks at platforms not only through the lens of neoclassical economics, but also of institutional economics and critical political economy, showing how these theories differ in their assessment of the consequences of platforms and the need for re...

There is a crisis of trust in information. Technology offers unprecedented potential to support informed debate and decision-making, but the threats to reliable information and a healthy public debate are growing. Politicians, regulators, platforms, news media and campaigners are responding, with mixed motives and uncertain results. While most shar...

Published in Spanish and English in Observacom, 1 July 2018. Modern digital platforms are distinguished by their use of digital technologies for binding, coordinating, and implementing methods for linking multiple suppliers and consumers or citizens using their data. The platform strategies enable datafication, information circulation and commodifi...

This chapter assesses the benefits and problems encountered in the face of disruptive digital technologies. It considers the social imaginaries that underpin claims that everyone must adjust to a natural pathway of technological innovation, even if this means an increasing risk of humans ceding control over their lives to large digital platform ope...

This article focuses on how we imagine our digitally mediated society and on whether alternative worlds or pathways are possible.

This article considers challenges to policy and regulation presented by the dominant digital platforms. A radical democratic framing of the deliberative process is developed to acknowledge the full complexity of power relations that are in play in policy and regulatory debates and this view is contrasted with a liberal democratic perspective. We sh...

Book edited by Kelinwachter, W., Kettemann, M. C., Senges, M. and Mosene, K - short comment on future organisation of Internet Governance

O trabalho aborda as causas e consequências das transformações na mídia e nas tecnologias de comunicação, discutindo se os grandes atores globais responsáveis por elas devem prestar contas pelo modo como o ambiente digitalmente mediado está se alterando. Tecnologias de comunicação mais antigas também trouxeram à tona discussões sobre a accountabili...

O trabalho aborda as causas e consequências das transformações na mídia e nas tecnologias de comunicação, discutindo se os grandes atores globais responsáveis por elas devem prestar contas pelo modo como o ambiente digitalmente mediado está se alterando. Tecnologias de comunicação mais antigas também trouxeram à tona discussões sobre a accountabili...

In Press

The current path of digital technology innovation is seen as inevitable and good for the economy and citizens. But as ROBIN MANSELL writes, there are looming and profound questions about digital divides we cannot ignore

This paper considers both the empowering and the disempowering features of the digital environment in relation to the scope for individual and collective agency to shape the mediated environment. Digitally mediated life is disempowering for citizens much of the time as a result of power asymmetries framed by global capitalism. It is misleading, how...

Cette contribution s’intéresse à la fois aux dimensions de l’environnement numérique accordant du pouvoir et à celles limitant la capacité d’agir de l’agentivité individuelle et collective à façonner l’environnement médiatisé. La plupart du temps, la vie médiée par les technologies numériques diminue la capacité d’agir (disempowering) des citoyenne...

Contests for the control of information and communication networks and, specifically, control of digital bits of power (the capacity to control information processing) in the current period often take the form of struggles over network neutrality. This paper examines how, historically, such struggles have been accompanied by changes in the configur...

Digital technological innovation is taken by many to signify societal progress and the promise of equitable and sustainable societies. Others link the complex digital system to multiple and persistent inequalities and to a concern that innovations in areas such as artificial intelligence, algorithmic computation and machine learning and their appli...

This paper examines some of the relationships between economic and social inequality and digitally mediated communication.1 Researchers generally agree that there is a reciprocal relationship between expressions of inequality and changes in the digitally mediated world, but there are large differences in their views about how these relationships wo...

This book opens the often narrow discourse on the future of Europe and criticises the false dichotomy between nationalism on the one hand and a neoliberal version of Europe on the other. Existing emancipatory projects from across the continent are presented together with reflections on strategies to achieve a democratic Europe beyond the nation sta...

This chapter considers the implications of the increasingly common juxtaposition of three keywords - surveillance, power and communication – specifically in the context of the role of algorithms in society.

This chapter considers the implications of the increasingly common juxtaposition of three keywords - surveillance, power and communication in the context of the role of algorithms in society. It examines whether there are realistic alternatives pathways for the development of digital technologies so that they are better aligned with citizen’s inter...

In this article, I argue that interdisciplinarity in the media and communication field encourages a focus on why the media and communication matter. It helps to draw scholarly attention to the need for theory development and critical analysis of the material and symbolic facets of mediated communication. Interdisciplinarity offers a pathway for res...

This paper considers limitations of existing network technologies for distributed theatrical performance in the creative arts and for symmetrical real-time interaction in online learning environments. It examines the experience of a multidisciplinary research consortium that aimed to introduce a solution to latency and other network problems experi...

By Robert E Babe, Lexington Books, Boulder Co, 275 pages, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7391-4131-1 (cloth : alk. paper), ISBN 978-0-7391-4132-8 (pbk. : alk. paper), ISBN 978-0-7391-4133-5 (electronic)

This paper examines some of the reasons for the persistent debate about whether the Internet is empowering or disempowering for civil society actors. The Internet is sometimes associated with the end of hierarchy because of its technical architecture and, at other times, with a disempowering lack of transparency. In the “big data” era power relatio...

Purpose: The paper examines recent developments in European policy debates concerned with whether governments should intervene in the digital intermediary marketplace to protect the public’s interest. Design/methodology/approach: The paper discusses the public’s interest in the evolution of the digital intermediary marketplace, it considers the ec...

This paper asks whether destabilizations associated with the global financial crisis and rapid innovation in digital technologies may be creating possibilities for a rebalancing of commercial market and other values associated with equality and fairness in policy interventions aimed at building knowledge societies. An analysis of high-level policy...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781118767771

RESUMO Este trabalho examina o potencial para colaboração entre profissionais da ciência formal e grupos frouxamente conectados online que empregam crowdsourcing para gerar recursos de informação digital. Quais são as diferenças entre os modos preferidos de governar a criação do conhecimento de cientistas e de outros grupos online? Faz-se uma disti...

RESUMO Este trabalho examina o potencial para colaboração entre profissionais da ciência formal e grupos frouxamente conectados online que empregam crowdsourcing para gerar recursos de informação digital. Quais são as diferenças entre os modos preferidos de governar a criação do conhecimento de cientistas e de outros grupos online? Faz-se uma disti...

This article examines prevailing institutional norms that are visible in international policy discourse concerning the goals of investing in digital technologies. An analysis of policy discourse associated with the World Summit on the Information Society shows how, despite the use of terms such as “open” and “participatory,” the practice of informa...

This paper illustrates the persistence of an exogenous model of development that underpins many interventions aimed at employing information and communication technologies (ICTs) to meet development goals. The analysis is based on a sample of texts from reports produced by United Nations agencies and the World Bank. The aim is to show how the disco...

Governance arrangements have multiple implications for the norms and practices that influence citizen access to networks, opportunities for freedom of expression, and privacy. This article sets out a research agenda aimed at examining new forms of collective action in practice with a particular focus on how choices are limited by different norms co...

Global media and communication policy studies is a relatively young fi eld of inquiry within university departments, although it addresses issues that have been of interest to scholars since the earliest days of international communication. Technological innovation, changes in industrial and cultural policy, the liberalization of telecommunication...

The challenge of building an inclusive, equitable and sustainable European information society is at the heart of A Digital Agenda for Europe (European Commission, 2010a). These aspirations are not themselves very controversial. They become so, however, when the strategies aimed at achieving them are examined with respect to the emphasis that is gi...

This paper examines the potential for collaboration between formal science professionals and loosely connected online groups that employ crowdsourcing to generate digital information resources. What are the differences between scientists’ and other online groups’ preferred modes of governing knowledge creation? A distinction is drawn between consti...

The proportionality of the UK Digital Economy Act 2010 which aims to curtail illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing is examined in this paper in the light of changes in online norms and culture. Based on an analysis of recent studies and a critical reflection on the nature of changes in digital media production and file-sharing behaviour, we conclude th...

This paper examines the ways loosely connected online groups and formal science professionals are responding to the potential for collaboration using digital technology platforms and crowdsourcing as a means of generating data in the digital information commons. The preferred approaches of each of these groups to managing information production, ci...

Internet Studies has been one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding interdisciplinary fields to emerge over the last decade. The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies has been designed to provide a valuable resource for academics and students in this area, bringing together leading scholarly perspectives on how the Internet has been studied and h...

Media structures play an important role in explaining media performance. The research on media systems, institutions and organizations developed significantly over the last decade. This volume contains contributions that deal with media structures and their change, the influence of media structures on both media organizations and media content as w...

Robin Mansell is professor of new media and the internet at LSE. She is interested in how and why people communicate with each other, especially when their relationships are mediated by the use of information and communication technologies.

This is one in a series of papers being published by IISD’s Global Connectivity team to inform and stimulate discussion and debate on the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs), the Internet and sustainability, surrounding the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 (Rio+20), the UN In...

The rapid spread of mobile phones has increased access to an enormous range of applications that are highly valued by urban and rural populations in developing countries. The diffusion of the mobile phone has been faster than any other information and communication technology in human history, but the capabilities for using this technology to its f...

The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy offers insights into the boundaries of this field of study, assesses why it is important, who is affected, and with what political, economic, social and cultural consequences. •Provides the most up to date and comprehensive collection of essays from top scholars in the field. •Includes contribut...

This paper reflects critically on challenges and opportunities associated with developing a theoretical framework for an interdisciplinary Framework Programme 7 research project funded by the European Commission in the area of digital ecosystems. The paper first provides a description of the interdisciplinary structure of the research agenda of the...

This paper examines corporate interests in the evolution of the Internet, arguing that the Internet is not a neutral configuration of technologies. In reviewing the state's role in regulating the Internet, the paradoxical alliance between the neoliberal economic and political agenda and advocacy of an open unregulated Internet is highlighted. Evide...

Despite the growing amount of research on Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FL/OSS) development, there is little insight into how structural factors associated with institutions influence the patterns of software developer activity in this area. This article examines some of the dynamics of the development of this type of software and the extent to...

The assessment of scholarly literature on the Information Society provided in this paper sets out and distinguishes between the analytical foundations of mainstream and critical contributions from a selection of disciplines and fields with a view to considering why there is so little reciprocal engagement among them, and whether there are new oppor...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a brief history of the information society and a research framework addressing the challenges of ensuring that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are applied in ways that are enabling and responsive to the varied contexts in which people live their lives. Design/methodology/approach...

This article presents a brief history of the Information Society and a research framework that is intended to address the challenges of ensuring that information and communication technologies are applied in ways that are enabling and responsive to the varied contexts in which people live their lives. ICT policies have come to be reasonably well-ac...

Despite the growing amount of research on free/open source (F/OS) software development, there is little insight into how structural factors associated with institutions influence the patterns of software developer activity in this area. This chapter examines some of the dynamics of the development of this type of software and the extent to which th...

The label ‘new media’ is closely associated with The Information Society and with a particular vision of developments in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). For economists who follow developments in digital ICTs, these terms are aligned with a vision where innovative ideas and technologies are expected to ‘fuel’ economic g...

There are many claims and counterclaims in the academic literature on innovations in information and communication technologies (ICTs) about their relationship to power. Different disciplinary perspectives privilege various assumptions about the social consequences that are likely to accompany the innovation process. In this chapter, some of these...

Special Issue: Media Governance: New Policies for Changing Media

The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies is about the many challenges presented by information and communication technologies (ICTs). The authors are principally researchers in anthropology, economics, philosophy, politics, and sociology. The book sets out an intellectual agenda that examines the implications of ICTs for in...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us …” — Cha...

The implications of the new media that are associated with substantial changes in the social, political and economic power relationships embedded in social networks are discussed in this chapter. I argue that policy makers, business leaders and citizens must become more aware of the many different ways that relationships mediated by the new media m...