Political Economy Of Communication Research Articles

Vincent Mosco’s Critical-Humanist Political Economy of Communication

Vincent Mosco (1948-2024) grounded and advanced the approach of the Political Economy of Communication (PEC). This paper discusses some aspects of his Critical-Humanist approach to the Political Economy of Communication. It engages with the foundations of Vincent Mosco’s thought; the roles that labour and communication play in it; Karl Marx and Marxian scholarship in Media and Communication Studies; culture, ideology critique, and the digital sublime; as well as democracy, the media, and the public good. Vincent Mosco’s life and work will forever be remembered and will shape future generations of activist-scholars.

Research on the Phenomenon of Younger Digital Workers on the Short Video Platform

With the development of new media technology and mobile devices, short videos have gradually become popular. However, behind the seemingly prosperous scene is the loss of subjectivity for children and adolescents in the bizarre virtual world shaped by short videos. Based on this phenomenon, this paper uses the concept of "digital labor" from the political economy of communication and uses in-depth interviews and content analysis to study the media behavior of young digital laborers on short video platforms. Finally, it concludes that the essence of minors' addiction to short videos is the unlimited exploitation of surplus value by the platforms. They actively compete for discourse power in the online world while becoming puppets of traffic in the trend of imitation and following, ultimately being trapped in an alienated childhood with abnormal growth practices.

The Strictest Taboo: The Marginalization of Marxism in Mainstream Communication Studies

Our study uses big data analysis to examine the influence of Marxism on communication studies throughout its history. We track citations of Marxist authors and the use of Marxist concepts in the titles, keywords, or abstracts of publications in the Web of Science scholarly database in the category of communication. We find that Marxian authors and ideas were almost completely absent from the mainstream of media studies until the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War and the Great Recession of 2008 significantly increased citations of Marxist authors. We use network analysis to identify different currents of thought or paradigmatic appropriations of Marxism within communication studies and identify five clusters of appropriation of Marx’s ideas within communication studies: Theories of Democracy, Political Economy of Communication, Critique of Power Relations, Feminism and Antiracism, and Critical Discourse Analysis.

O Conselho de Comunicação Social como símbolo da luta pela participação no debate regulatório em Comunicação

This article discusses the Social Communication Council, linked to the Federal Senate, as a symbol of the search for greater social participation in decision-making processes in the field of communication, as a collegiate body in clear dispute for space, definition and continuity since its creation. From the Political Economy of Communication and the Anthropology of State processes, the council is understood as a place of representative listening to civil society since the 1988 constituent. Through a documentary ethnography of the body's archives, we seek problematize the representation of civil society and follow the discursive web around the collegiate itself, aiming to problematize its representative structure, power asymmetries perceived and consider its capacity and scope of action.

Ibn Khaldûn and the Political Economy of Communication: A Reply to Graham Murdock

Ibn Khaldûn and the Political Economy of Communication: A Reply to Graham Murdock

Tren Dalam Ekonomi Politik Komunikasi

The globalization of the field, the expansion of a long-standing emphasis on historical research, the growth of research from alternative viewpoints, particularly feminism and labor, the shift from an emphasis on old to new media, and the growth of activism linked to the political economy tradition are five major trends in the political economy of communication that are addressed in this paper. None of them are really new trends; rather, they build on earlier ones that were frequently buried behind more prevalent ones at the time. However, the results of particular battles within each of these areas point to political economists as having significantly contributed to the general upsurge in activity surrounding important communication concerns.
 Keywords: Globalization, feminism, labor, political economy of communication, communication history, and activism

Una perspectiva dialógica entre la estructura productiva y las tramas narrativas de las ficciones seriadas televisivas argentinas (2011-2020)

This article analyzes how the ownership structure and the alliances between the agents producing serialized fiction for television are linked to the themes and narratives addressed by this type of cultural product. From the political economy of communication and cultural studies, the paper examines the predominant themes in the 100 most watched premiere fictions on open television in Argentina during the decade between 2011 and 2020. It is concluded that there is a wide predominance of universal themes with non-structural local references, over purely local ones.

Audio-visual industry and digital platforms in India: A contribution from political economy of communication

This article examines the role played by digital platforms in the transformation of the audio-visual industry in India. Are video-on-demand platforms contributing to India’s growing dependence on global players or are they asserting the diversification of domestic players and the progress of Indian capitalism in the cultural and digital industries? To answer, we analyse the strategies of competition and collaboration between historical audio-visual players versus communication players, the dynamics of foreign ownership and the content localisation strategies of global players. We conclude that the study of digital platforms offers an important insight into new forms of economic and cultural hegemony in the cultural industries.

An Analysis of the Phenomenon of US-Russian Political Propaganda in Digital Media Regarding the War in Ukraine—Based on the Perspective of the Political Economy of Communication

An Analysis of the Phenomenon of US-Russian Political Propaganda in Digital Media Regarding the War in Ukraine—Based on the Perspective of the Political Economy of Communication

The Culture of Convergence in the Framework of the Anglo-Saxon Debate between Political Economy of Communication and Cultural Studies

Durante los años noventa se desarrolló una controversia, dentro de los estudios en comunicación del mundo anglosajón, entre representantes de los Estudios Culturales y referentes de la corriente de la Economía Política de la Comunicación. En 2014, en el mundo hispanoparlante, este debate volvió a la escena académica de la mano de Christian Fuchs, quien desarrolló un cuestionamiento a tres libros adscriptos a la corriente de los Estudios Culturales. El propósito de este trabajo es, primero, sistematizar el debate original y, luego, realizar la misma operación con su versión más reciente. Finalmente, proyectar ambas controversias sobre el planteo de Henry Jenkins acerca de la “cultura de la convergencia”. Se entiende que la significación de esta operación analítica reside en que dicha categoría asume en forma extrema los planteos de los Estudios Culturales que son objeto del cuestionamiento de la Economía Política de la Comunicación. Estas cuestiones evidencian la importancia de analizar la comunicación y la cultura desde esta perspectiva.

The rise and fall of MapQuest

This article builds an historical account of the rise and fall of US mapping firm MapQuest. It charts the emergence and rapid rise of MapQuest as a popular early provider of online maps – detailing notable innovations, key developments, and successive ownership changes, and the significance of these for MapQuest – and it documents its equally rapid fall. The article draws on political economy of communication (and geographic political economy) approaches in its analysis of MapQuest. This critical framework is valuable for the way that it draws attention to the different stakeholders involved in controlling and commercialising MapQuest’s applications for web-based and mobile devices, and the structural factors that shape and influence the industries in which it operates. From this analysis, it is argued that a range of factors led to MapQuest’s dramatically diminished market share within the field of online mapping. These included: a lack of revenue generation opportunities; significant map data quality issues; loss of consumer visibility due to search algorithm interference; and a reactive rather than proactive approach to innovation under consecutive owners. This account of MapQuest is important in two ways. First, while MapQuest is a significant firm in the history of contemporary digital mapping, particularly as a pioneer of online distributed mapping, the firm’s history and its contribution to digital mapping remains under-represented in internet histories scholarship. Second, this article contributes to growing interest in and deepening critical understanding of platform precarity, asking: What becomes of platforms when they falter? And what are the factors that contribute to their decline?

Theoretical framework media and political economy of communication

This article is presented with a deductive method orientation, with a paradigm of hermeneutic order, based on experience, carried out under an exclusively qualitative approach, which will serve as a scaffold for a next study of digital media. Communications are a means or mechanism of organization for coexistence in society. The political economy of communication has its origin in the theories or critical approaches of Frankfurt and cultural studies, which has analyzed the role of the owners or concessionaires of large radio and television corporations, highlighting the bias they have given to the dissemination of information and culture, orienting it towards the defense of their ideology or their commercial interests, thus leading to the alienation and training of large masses of audience. In these modern times, the massification of the media is the result of technological convergences, where three disciplines or spaces are at work: information technology, telecommunications and the Internet, which is the axis or center of the new communications ecosystem. Social networks allow feedback between sender and receiver of news, transforming the unidirectional communication process provided by conventional media.

Datafied mobile markets: Measuring control over apps, data accesses, and third-party services

The increasing use of mobile applications (apps) has turned data harvesting, mining, and distribution into commercial as well as functional backbones of mobile communication. Acknowledging that contemporary markets for mobile communication are increasingly datafied, this article maps and discusses how infrastructures for mobile datafication are controlled. It combines perspectives from critical data studies, political economy of communication, and app studies in an empirical analysis of the 500 most downloaded apps in the Google Play store (November 2020). Focusing on control over and ownership in the three interdependent markets for apps, data accesses, and third-party services, the analysis documents, confirms, and explains established power structures and sheds light on the mobile datafication processes that frame the use of apps and commodification of users. As such, it provides an empirical baseline for future monitoring, and ultimately regulation, of mobile app ecosystems.

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.

Commodification via the New Media: Content, Audience, and Labour in GoJek’s GoFood service

The existence of new media makes humans have control over the media they consume only through a smartphone on their hands. GoJek contributes new dynamics because the use of new media in the form of an application has changed most of the life patterns of media behavior. In the context of new media, media behavior is inseparable from the concept of political economy communication. This research uses a qualitative approach by extracting information from users, merchants, and drivers on GoFood service features taken by purposive sampling. The collected data from the result of observations, interviews, and documentation will be associated and analyzed using the political economy communication concept of Vincent Mosco, especially the commodification. Researchers found that the aspects of the commodification of content, commodification of audience, and commodification of labor of GoFood service features resulted in changes in society in adapting internet technology which also affected the welfare of the Indonesian economy.Keywords: GoFood, commodification, political economy of communication, and new media

Working–class heritage and the marketization of difference – the limits of new museology at Manhattan's Tenement Museum

ABSTRACT Working-class history museums face immense challenges in trying to reconcile being socially progressive and class-oriented while also maintaining relevance and success in gentrifying areas. Museums are embedded within political economic structures of power, and thus face considerable limitations in their efforts to act as meaningful sites of political or ideological contestation. This article examines Manhattan’s Tenement Museum as a case study to explore the inherent tensions that exist in the representation of working-class heritage in a capitalist, gentrifying city. Synthesising research collected from extensive fieldwork between 2009 and 2017, as well as public records and published media, ethnographic analyses of museum space and exhibitions are performed in an effort to understand how the museum constructs and disseminates working-class history. Although the museum is careful to emphasise the socio-political agency of the people it represents, it largely downplays the Lower East Side’s activist, labour-oriented past and present. In order to more fully delve into questions of economic power and cultural production, the political economy of communication is used as an analytic lens to explore questions of identity politics and cultural struggle, urban sustainability, and finally, the precarious labour of the museum’s own workers.

Media, Elections, and Ethnopolitics in Kenya: In the 2017 Elections Reportage, Ethnicity still Mattered

This study examined the value of ethnopolitics during media reporting of the 2017 electoral process in Kenya. The study relied on the political economy of media theory by Vincent Mosco the propaganda theory by Herman and Chomsky and the theory of agenda-setting by McCombs and Shaw. The study used descriptive research design with the population of the study drawn from Nakuru Town Sub-County. Our research relied on observation schedules to obtain data from the televised political analyses shows and propaganda political videos clip. Interview schedules were used for media practitioners (editors, reporters and media sellers) and politicians (MPs and MCAs), while unstructured questionnaires were used for the media consumers (audience). All qualitative data were processed and analysed using the critical interpretative approach, while the quantitative data were presented descriptively in tables, graphs, charts and percentages generated using SPSS software. The study findings indicated that during the 2017 electoral process in Kenya, political players used ethnopolitics to capture extensive media coverage. Similarly, there was a direct influence of ethnopolitics and ethnopolitical journalism on the media consumer knowledge and ethnopolitics normalisation. The study recommends that media, being the most influential cultural institution and player in the political economy, self-regulates to minimise ethnopolitics dissemination. The output of this study adds to the existing knowledge in communication and media studies and the political economy of mass media. The findings should be able to inform policy formulation among the mass media industry and media regulatory bodies in Kenya. Keywords: ethnicity, ethnopolitics, ethnopolitical oligarchy, political economy of communication

Political Economy of Communications and Media Regulation in India: Impact of Laws on Online Curated Content Centre for Research in Finance, Technology & Law Working Paper No. 4/2021

Political Economy of Communications and Media Regulation in India: Impact of Laws on Online Curated Content Centre for Research in Finance, Technology & Law Working Paper No. 4/2021

ESPACIO PÚBLICO OPOSICIONAL Y CIBERACTIVISMO UNA LECTURA MATERIALISTA DE LA ACCIÓN CONECTIVA

espanolInternet y las redes sociales estan modificando el sistema tradicional de medios de comunicacion y contribuyendo a transformaciones en la esfera publica, que exigen una conceptualizacion mas amplia del proceso de mediacion social. La omnipresencia de las nuevas tecnologias de la informacion y la comunicacion (NTIC’s) en fenomenos emergentes de participacion politica y activismo digital ponen de manifiesto la existencia de un nuevo ecosistema informativo, que hace posible el denominado “espacio publico oposicional” (Negt, 2007). Los nuevos movimientos sociales, especialmente desde 2011, han irrumpido en la arena mediatica fomentando procesos de expresion y emancipacion, que estan re-significando los tradicionales espacios de accion colectiva, las logicas hegemonicas y las instituciones de representacion social dominante. Este articulo plantea un abordaje desde la Economia Politica de la Comunicacion para el estudio de las nuevas formas emergentes de accion colectiva, participacion politica y activismo digital. Ademas, desde una lectura materialista contribuye a la comprension del alcance y la naturaleza tecnopolitica de los nuevos movimientos de protesta y propone una agenda de investigacion acorde al contexto de crisis de acumulacion que vive hoy el capitalismo, en todo el mundo. EnglishThe Internet and social networks are modifying the traditional media system and contributing to transformations in the public sphere, which require a broaderconceptualization of the social mediation process. The omnipresence of the new information and communication technologies (NTIC’s) in emerging phenomena of political participation and digital activism show the existence of a new information ecosystem, which makes the so-called “oppositional public space” possible (Negt, 2007). The new social movements, especially since 2011, have broken into the media arena promoting processes of expression and emancipation, which are re-signifying the traditional spaces of collective action, hegemonic logics and institutions of dominant social representation. This article proposes an approach from the Political Economy of Communication for the study of the new emerging forms of collective action, political participation and digital activism. In addition, from a materialistic reading it contributes to the understanding of the scope and the technopolitical nature of the new protest movements and proposes a research agenda according to the context of the accumulation crisis that capitalism is experiencing today, throughout the world.

Prisa en el sistema mediático español: del liderazgo a la pérdida de centralidad

Prisa led from the beginning of the nineties until 2009 the Spanish media system, reaching a turnover of 4,000 million euros per year in 2008. And until it divested its stake in Canal+, Prisa was the largest Spanish multimedia group, both in terms of net income and cumulative audience (15.65%) of press, radio, television and internet. The reasons why a group, destined to be one of the great European champions, lost in a few years its centrality, as well as a good part of its size, measured in net income, are the subject of this article. From the theoretical perspective, this research is based on the Political Economy of Communication, although the article also stops in the analysis of “financialization” and the consequent debt that ultimately hindered the development of the group and that explains, along with other erroneous strategic decisions, the dismantling of a conglomerate that had taken more than thirty years to build.