This book is an account of the communication dynamics of the network society and it aims to formulate a systematic theory of communication of contemporary societies. This study and analysis of networked communication offers us an interpretation and decoding of what is our communication today and how our way of communicating is shaping our social, political, and economic institutions. Understanding the contemporary communicative phenomenon is fundamental, not only for understanding society and our daily lives but also for questioning the institutions we need to create to live the life we desire.
Gustavo Cardoso argues that the social appropriation of networks reflects and creates distinctive cultures, but such distinctiveness is also anchored in common communicative traits that gave rise to a new communicational mode and a new culture of the network society. He examines the processes of communicational crises based on research in several countries and the transformation of journalistic institutions and its economic and political implications. He shows that the social appropriation of communicative networks has shaped mass communication into a new networked communication mode and mass culture into a mediatized culture. He suggests that the effect of the generalized adoption of networked communication around the world is to give rise to a new media system in which the communication of communication is the common trait and where a new communication paradigm is born, in which we, the people, are the message.