Lighting the paths to social transformation. Manuel Castells, one of the world's most cited sociologists examines the power of social networks for social change.

Prof Manuel Castells,one of the most-cited sociologists in the world has spent the last 20 years documenting the rise of the network society and studying the interaction between internet use, counter-culture, urban protest movements and personal identity.

In our time, multimodal, digital networks of horizontal communication are the fastest and most autonomous, interactive and self-expanding means of communications in history. From the Arab uprisings, to the indignadas movement in Spain, to Occupy in the US, the networked social movements of the digital age represent a new species of social movement.

Leading scholar of our contemporary networked society, Manuel Castells, visits the RSA to shed light on these movements, and to examine their formation, their dynamics, their values and their prospects for social transformation.

Speaker: Manuel Castells, University Professor and Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #RSAnetworks

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