What is Political Economy?• Definitions by prime theorists• Origins in economic thought• How has it been taken up in

communication studies? • Major theoreticians• Tensions

McChesney:• Relationship between media and

communication systems and the broader social structures of society

• How do media systems reinforce, challenge, or influence existing class and social relations?

McChesney:• How does media ownership,

support mechanisms, and government policies influence media behavior and content?

• What are the structural factors and labour processes in the production, distribution, and consumption of communication?

McChesney:• Pessimistic view of sustainability of

p-e in American universities because of increasing corporatization

• But, passionate about p-e of communication as being interdisciplinary, taking risks…

• Advocate for media reform – public advocate

Mosco (Meehan and Wasko)• PE examines the production,

distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication and information resources

• History• Social Totality• Moral Philosophy• Praxis

History• How to understand the global political

economy• How has social change happened?• What have been previous struggles and

how are they the same or different than current struggles?

• E.g., is globalization new?• When looking at ‘new’ technologies, can

the past illuminate the present (radio: Internet)…

Social Totality• Holistic analysis• Relationship among commodities,

institutions, social relations, and hegemony

• What are the connections between the economic and the political?

Commodity form• Use of wage labour to produce

goods that are sold in the marketplace

• Media forms: television genres, databases, PPV

• Commodification of information• Corporatization of public space

Institutions• Those that support, sustain, subvert

public and private activities• Tensions between public vs. private• Globalization exacerbating nation-

state, capital, labour relationships• Closely interpenetrated regimes of

power and control in media systems

Social Relations• How do people engage with the

media?• Issues of race, class, gender• Have’s and have-not’s

That H Word – Hegemony• Process of constituting the

common-sense• Origins from Gramsci – how to

understand capitalist society• Used in analysis of social control• Beyond ideology – appears natural

Some examples from everyday life…• We take for granted that…• Voting = democratic process• Capitalistic marketplace =

productive & fair society• Objectivity as cornerstone of

journalism• (Now, let’s challenge these dominant

hegemonies!)

Moral Philosophical Outlooks• Social values• What are appropriate social

benefits?• An ethics of information in

society…• E.g., who are the winners and who

are the losers?

Praxis• In essence, practice & action• Concerned with social justice• Fighting for the public interest• Public intellectual stance

Mosco and Reddick• “…the study of control and survival

in social life”• Social transformation, social

totality, moral philosophy, praxis• Argues for a rethinking of p-e of

communications with entry points of commodification, spatialization, and structuration

Commodification• How capitalism accumulates

capital and realizes value through the transformation of use values into exchange values

• In short, the process of transforming use values into exchange values

How does this relate to imcommunication?• “Communication processes &

technologies contribute to the general process of commodification in the economy as a whole”

• Ex: just-in-time manufacturing, quick-response systems, e-commerce, information entrepreneurial

And, (this is from Mosco, 1996, 142)• “Commodification processes at work

in the society as a whole penetrate communication processes and institutions, so that improvements and contradictions in the societal commodification process influence communication as a social practice”

• E.g., deregulation, liberalization of media industries & telecom sectors

Commodification research• Class power• Media elites• Ownership patterns • Audience commodity• Government-lobbyist liaisons

Policy Research…• Policy – how this has contributed to

media commodification (neoliberalism)• Tensions between public and private

spheres• Media & democracy • Public interest (whither the…) – ex:

Aufderheide on US Telecom Act of 1996

Spatialization• Overcoming the constraints of

space and time in social life• Coined by Henri Lefebvre• Innis’ work on time-space• Castell – “space of flows” in

describing network society

Spatialization related to communication studies• Addressed in institutional

extension of corporate power in communications industry

• Analysis of corporate concentration• Horizontal and vertical integration• Conglomerization, cross-media

ownership• Media ownership mapping

Spatialization….and policy• Commercialization• Privatization• Liberalization• Internationalization

Structuration• “A process by which structures are

constituted out of human agency, even as they provide the very ‘medium’ of that constitution” (Mosco, 1996, 212)

• Looks at agency, social relations, social process, social practice, social movements

• Looks at class, gender, hegemony…