Commodity, Culture, Common Sense: Media Research and Paradigm Dialogue

Abstract

Recent debates between scholars representing political economy and cultural studies are reminiscent of exchanges between administrative and critical researchers in the 1970s and 1980s that produced no clearly opposing valuations undergirding their respective paradigms. Little real dialogue seems likely from the current debates between cultural studies and political economy, particularly as represented in the "colloquy" between them published in Critical Studies in Mass Communication. A close reading of that colloquy reveals stereotypes at work, which contrasts sharply with scholarship applying more integrative approaches, particularly the work applying critical research and theorizing on media artifacts, media institutions, and media audiences.