- Handy with Manuel Castells’ network society descriptions include hard and dirty politics: “politics will focus on network media and become even more cruel. Castells sees the following chain:
- politics needs the simplest possible message
- the simplest message is an image
- the simplest image is a person
- the most powerful political message is a negative message
- the best negative message is ruining the opponent’s personality. Thus, the politics will become even more dirty and unpleasant than it is now.”
Network media provides an atmosphere that audience of classical media can be the contributors of new media; the audience which before couldn’t reflect on the politician’s image, they can contribute and depict an image they desire. I suppose by means of network media, people can be more critical about politics and be more aware of its unpleasant image.
In the classical media, there was an image, whatever the politicians would have liked to illustrate themselves to people. Thereby people have accepted and believed it for a long time since no opponent could play a part. But the network media is more democratic and provide a ground for less powerful part of society to contribute and influence on the image which politicians try to feed people by. Perhaps the characteristic of this kind of media create more and more opponents rapidly; they would try to ruin each other images constantly and make politics to be shown more negative and cruel than it was seen before.
Interactive Media 