Critical Political Economy Of Communication Research Articles

Tracing the Birth of the Audience Commodity: A Review of Zoe Sherman’s Modern Advertising and the Market for Audience Attention

Scholars in the field of critical political economy of communication have long considered how the media industry’s economic arrangements have influenced modern capitalist systems. Notably, these scholars have argued that the media industry’s primary goal has been the construction of an “audience commodity” that can be sold to advertisers. In Modern Advertising and the Market for Audience Attention: The US Advertising Industry’s Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Transition, Zoe Sherman outlines the origins of this idea of the consumable audience. This review highlights the significant contributions of Sherman’s work for communication scholars. Moreover, it considers whether economic models that stress the power of information and data ownership are best suited to challenge the contemporary realities of surveillance capitalism, the roots of which Sherman traces to the professionalization of the advertising industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Digitizing freelance media labor: A class of workers negotiates entrepreneurialism and activism

Due to economic instability and technological change in digital media industries, media organizations and educators have encouraged freelance media workers to see themselves as individual businesses rather than a class of workers that should collectively protect their rights and fair pay. This article examines how freelance media workers negotiate individualism and collectivism, producing a contradictory freelance class ideology. It is grounded in an exploratory critical political economy of communication and sociology of work approach. It is based on interviews with 21 freelance journalists and professional writers, considering how they discursively construct their work practices and coping strategies vis-à-vis their uses of digital technology and the structural factors that shape media industries. Through discourse, these workers produce a contradictory “e-lance” class ideology as both entrepreneurs who temporarily sell goods and services and activists who temporarily resist demands from clients that they give up their rights and pay.

Hegemony and the Interest of Egypt’s Business Elite in Post-Mubarak Press

This article aims at critically analysing the hegemony of Egypt‟s business elite and the private press they own following Mubarak‟s fall. Hegemony requires the exercise of power to maintain consent under changing conditions such as the 2011 uprising and the 2013 military coup. This study answers the question of “why and how Egypt‟s business elite controls the post-Mubarak press?”. Situated within the interdisciplinary domain of “critical political economy of communication”, this article focuses on the two most popular privately-owned newspapers al-Masry al-Youm and al-Watan. Interviews with high-profile sources have been conducted and embedded into the research. Findings show that the Egyptian private press, particularly in the post-Mubarak era, is closely controlled by the business elite in favour of their interests, and indirectly in favour of the political elite – whether civilian or military. The sector‟s hegemonic position was briefly shaken by the 2011 uprising, then quickly maintained and reinforced before the 2013 coup.

Hegemony and the Interest of Egypt’s Business Elite in Post-Mubarak Press

This article aims at critically analysing the hegemony of Egypt’s business elite and the private press they own following Mubarak’s fall. Hegemony requires the exercise of power to maintain consent under changing conditions such as the 2011 uprising and the 2013 military coup. This study answers the question of “why and how Egypt’s business elite controls the post-Mubarak press?”. Situated within the interdisciplinary domain of “critical political economy of communication”, this article focuses on the two most popular privately-owned newspapers al-Masry al-Youm and al-Watan. Interviews with high-profile sources have been conducted and embedded into the research. Findings show that the Egyptian private press, particularly in the post-Mubarak era, is closely controlled by the business elite in favour of their interests, and indirectly in favour of the political elite – whether civilian or military. The sector’s hegemonic position was briefly shaken by the 2011 uprising, then quickly maintained and reinforced before the 2013 coup.

The Digital Advertising Gap and the Online News Industry in Croatia

Internet advertising brought about many changes in communication production, distribution, and consumption. By using critical political economy of communication as the mainstay of our approach, we provide supporting evidence of the ambiguous influence of data-driven advertising dynamic on the news industry and audience habits. We look at what we define as the digital advertising gap, or the difference between the size of the internet advertising market and the total income of digital news’ firms. Digital intermediaries such as Google and Facebook are the final destinations for the majority of internet advertising investments in Europe and Croatia. A multi-sided, internet advertising market creates a fertile ground for the production of untrustworthy journalistic content. The digital advertising gap provides an example of a ‘market failure’ in which the market does not efficiently allocate public information goods. We argue that the confidence in the ability of the market to self-regulate the internet should be re-considered in European and national media policies.

Media, Social Ontology and Intentionality: Notes from Meta-Theoretical Borders

The purpose of this paper is to present a meta-theoretical analysis of three broadly defined areas of academic work with substantial internal complexity and difference: mediatisation, reflexive modernisation and critical political economy of communication. Each developed a complex set of ideas and concepts for explaining elements of media, communication and/or social change. The main argument is that by looking at the intersection between these areas, a more complete argument can be made for explaining the complexity of media and social change in the twenty-first century. Two philosophical concepts aid in untangling the connections and differences between these areas. First, social ontology or the understanding of what society is and what is it made of. Second, intentionality or the understanding of the experiences of actors about society as well as their role in media and communication change. By looking at the boundaries and connecting points between mediatisation, reflexive modernisation and critical political economy of communication the paper offers an analysis of multiple ontological dimensions: cultural and social constructivist, social and sociotechnical and political-economic.

“The concentration of power, represented by current prevailing media conditions, is and ought to be open to challenge.” An interview with Peter Golding.

Interview with Peter Golding, Emeritus Professor at Northumbria University, Visiting Professor in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University and one of the crucial figures in Critical Political Economy of Communication. In the interview we discuss the role of critical scholarship, the sometimes troubled relationship between cultural studies and critical political economy of communication, the importance of a sociological perspective in studying media, and the impact of broader socio-political trends on academia.

The Point Is to Change It! Introduction to Critical Political Interventions in Media and Communication Studies

The intention of this paper is to provide a historical overview and an introduction to the interviews with Bodgan Osolnik, Breda Pavlič, Cees Hamelink, Daya K. Thussu, Peter Golding and Dan Hind presented in this special section. Following Marx, we entitled the section The Point Is to Change It! Critical Political Interventions in Media and Communication Studies. We discuss the need for critical theory to bridge the divide between theory and practice because this notion is central to all of the interviews in one way or another. We also provide a historical contextualization of important theoretical as well as political developments in the 1970s and 1980s. This period may be seen as a watershed era for the critical political economy of communication and for the political articulation of demands for a widespread transformation and democratization in the form of the New World Information and Communication Order initiative. We believe that many contemporary issues have a long history, with their roots firmly based in this era. The historical perspective therefore cannot be seen as nostalgia, but as an attempt to understand the historical relations of power and how they have changed and shifted. In our view, the historical perspective is crucial not only for understanding long-lasting historical trends, but also to remind ourselves that the world is malleable, and to keep alive the promises of the progressive struggles of the past.

China and global internet governance: toward an alternative analytical framework

Drawing on historical methods, this study assesses the conventional “cyber-sovereignty” framework, which has been used to capture and interpret China’s stance toward global Internet governance. This framework focuses on political control and tends to reduce China’s policies to the attempts by an authoritarian state to elevate governments and intergovernmental organizations to be the only legitimate governors of global cyberspace. As it traces the evolution of China’s relationship with the global Internet in the past three decades, the study demonstrates that China’s stance is more complex than the prevalent framework allows and that it is both built upon and different from the US-centric, market-oriented Internet governance scheme. This study recognizes the inadequacy of the conventional framework and invokes a theory of critical political economy of communication, thereby offering an alternative model to explicate the complex power dynamics behind China’s changing strategies. The alternative model advanced in this study is based on the understanding of China’s evolving approach as the product of multifaceted interactions among a group of power-holders that include both state agencies and business units on the transnational level.

Prospects for trade unions and labour organisations in India's IT and ITES industries

Drawing on interviews conducted with trade unionists and labour activists in 2008, this article addresses nascent unions and professional associations operating in India's information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITES) industries. This work builds upon the literature that is developing around unionisation within knowledge- and information-based workplaces, and is particularly informed by the work of Mosco and McKercher (Mosco & McKercher, 2008; McKercher & Mosco, 2006, 2007), whose research focuses on knowledge worker mobilisation. Such an approach, as adopted here, requires reflection on India's industrial relations regime and the IT and ITES industries’ political-economic framework in the broader context of the new international division of labour, based on the increasingly fragmented commodity production chains that are distributed throughout the globe. The central theoretical model is grounded on a critical political economy of communication (Mosco, 2009).

Peripheral View: Conceptualizing the Information Society as a Postcolonial Subject

This article looks into the information society from a postcolonial subject position. It uses concepts from a postcolonial perspective and critical political economy of communication to investigate the information society. It perceives the information society as a discourse of social progress, and places it in historical context to show how imperial powers use discourses of progress to establish their control. It argues that when the information society is perceived from the South, it turns out to be a new imperial project designed to create markets for multinational corporations that own and operate information technologies, the engine of the information society. It also proposes an amendment — an anti-market utopia — to the information society to make it meaningful for the people of the South.