Communication Networks, Hegemony, and Communicative Action

Communicative action now commonly takes place in electronically mediated global networks and the networks are a powerful form of social ordering. This article analyzes the different forms of power that operate in communicative networks and how these alter communicative action. It suggests that the more optimistic literature on global and network governance, arguing and bargaining, and soft norm generation has not taken these new modes of hegemony fully into account. An analysis of the possible forms of communicative freedom in networks rounds off the article.