Ann Christiano Pens Review of “New Power”

Ann Christiano, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications Frank Karel Chair in Public Interest Communications and Center for Public Interest Communications director, wrote a review for Stanford Social Innovation Review on the new book “New Power.”

Christiano comments that the book by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms focuses on how power and influence are being driven by a participatory and peer-driven paradigm. She explains that “new power” is characterized by radical transparency, a willingness to allow communities to reinvent or re-create content, shared control, and actionable ideas that people make their own rather than simply consume. By contrast, “old power” refers to power that is held by a small group and inaccessible for the vast majority.

She states that the irony of the book is that new power is not new. Effective agents of lasting cultural and social change have often used the tools of new power to achieve their goals.

“If your canon for fomenting social change includes Rules for Radicals, Here Comes Everybody, Made to Stick, and Switch, you have probably been craving an up-to-date version—a new road map for driving change in a world where power belongs not to small concentrated groups who fiercely protect it, but to those who share control and incite others to co-create,” said Christiano. “Heimans and Timms have given us that, and with it a construct for understanding how new tools and the personalities that have arisen by using them are changing power dynamics.”

Posted: May 21, 2018
Category: College News
Tagged as: Ann Searight Christiano, Stanford Social Innvation Review