What is Political Economy? Definitions by prime theorists Origins in economic thought How has it...
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![Page 1: What is Political Economy? Definitions by prime theorists Origins in economic thought How has it been taken up in communication studies? Major theoreticians.](https://reader036.fdocuments.in/reader036/viewer/2022062312/551aed125503462e578b47c3/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
What is Political Economy?
• Definitions by prime theorists• Origins in economic thought• How has it been taken up in
communication studies? • Major theoreticians• Tensions
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Robert 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?
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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?
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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 advocacy is central to intellectual life
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Vincent Mosco • PE examines the production,
distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication and information resources
• History• Social Totality• Moral Philosophy• Praxis
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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)…
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Social Totality
• Holistic analysis• Relationship among commodities,
institutions, social relations, and hegemony
• What are the connections between the economic and the political?, the economic and the social?
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Commodity form
• Use of wage labour to produce goods that are sold in the marketplace
• Media forms: television genres, databases, pay-per-view forms, social media (third-party marketing)
• Commodification of information• Corporatization of public space
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Examines many institutions
• Those that support, sustain, subvert public and private activities
• Tensions between public vs. private• Globalization & trade relationships
which can exacerbate nation-state, capital, labour relationships
• Closely interpenetrated regimes of power and control in media systems
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Social Relations
• How do people engage with the media?
• Issues of race, class, gender, generational differences
• Have’s and have-not’s, digital divides…
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Unpacks/considers 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
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Some examples from everyday life…
• We take for granted that…• Voting = democratic process• Capitalistic marketplace = productive &
fair society• Objectivity is the cornerstone of
journalism• (Now, let’s challenge these dominant
hegemonies!)
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Moral Philosophical Outlooks
• Abiding concern with social values• What are appropriate social
benefits?• An ethics of information in
society…• E.g., who are the winners and who
are the losers?
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Praxis
• In essence, practice & action• Concerned with social justice• Fighting for the public interest• Public intellectual stance• Ex: McChesney’s public advocacy
for media reform
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Vincent Mosco
• “…the study of control and survival in social life”
• Argues for a rethinking of p-e of communications with entry points of commodification, spatialization, and structuration
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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
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How does this relate to communication?
• “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 entrepreneurialism
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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
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Commodification research
• Class power• Media elites• Ownership patterns • Audience commodity• Government-lobbyist liaisons
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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
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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
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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
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Spatialization….and policy
• Commercialization• Privatization• Liberalization• Internationalization
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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…