Political Economy
of Media
Behind every message stands a system.
Trace the resources, institutions and decisions that organise communication. Examine who controls media, how the work is funded and whose needs the system serves.
In this chapter · Open the contents
- The central idea
- Traditions and foundations
- Three entry points
- Content, audiences and labour
- Ownership and concentration
- Funding and newsroom decisions
- State, policy and critical junctures
- Global relations and unequal access
- Platforms, data and AI
- Case laboratory
- Contribution and limits
- Watch with a purpose
- Check your understanding
- Apply and investigate
- Glossary and readings
Explain the arrangements behind communication.
- Define the political economy of media and identify its critical commitments.
- Apply commodification, spatialization and structuration to a media case.
- Distinguish ownership, funding, labour and distribution relationships.
- Examine policy, concentration and digital platforms without assuming automatic effects.
- Design an evidence-based inquiry into media power and public consequences.
Who makes communication possible—and who can shape it?
A local newsroom wants to investigate unsafe housing. The assignment needs reporters, travel, access to records, legal review and time. Its largest advertiser sells property. Most readers arrive through a platform whose referrals fluctuate. The editor must decide whether the investigation can proceed.
No account of the eventual article is complete if it considers only the words on the page. We also need to examine the resources, relationships and decisions that made the reporting possible, difficult or impossible.
This chapter follows the critical political economy tradition discussed in Dr. USP’s lecture. It connects economic arrangements with political decisions, cultural life and social relations. Its questions concern newspapers and broadcasting, but also telecommunications, digital platforms, journalism labour and AI infrastructures.
Begin with a relationship, not a verdict
The property advertiser’s importance raises a question about dependence. It does not prove that the advertiser stopped the story. The platform’s influence raises a question about distribution. It does not establish that its ranking system determined every editorial decision.
A strong analysis identifies the relationship, explains a plausible mechanism, examines evidence and considers competing explanations. Ownership, funding and technology matter through arrangements that can be investigated.
Based on Dr. USP’s lecture and the supplied transcript, with scholarly clarification and original teaching examples. Contemporary newsroom, campus and platform scenarios are fictional. Numerical examples are illustrative, not estimates of a real market or organisation.
Media systems have histories. Their arrangements can change.
Political economy developed through debates about production, wealth, markets, the state and social life. The wider tradition contains different approaches. Critical political economy of media examines how communication is organised within relations of ownership, inequality and political power.
Vincent Mosco’s approach places social relations, especially power, at the centre of the production, distribution and consumption of communication resources. This is broader than calculating a media company’s revenue. It asks how that revenue model develops, whom it serves and what alternatives become possible.
Four commitments highlighted in the lecture
Ask how the system emerged.
A commercial broadcasting system, a public service institution or a platform market is not a natural starting point. Trace the decisions and conflicts through which it took shape.
Connect the spheres of life.
Study economic relations alongside politics, technology, culture and everyday life. Do not assume that a media balance sheet explains the whole social process.
Make the evaluative standard clear.
If you judge a system by independence, participation, diversity, access or fair work, explain that standard and identify the evidence relevant to it.
Link inquiry with action.
Analysis can inform institutional reform and public debate. A proposed intervention still needs evidence, an account of trade-offs and a way to evaluate its consequences.
Important contributions, rather than two sealed schools
| Scholar or group | Contribution to investigate | Question to take into the reading |
|---|---|---|
| Dallas W. Smythe | Advertising-supported communication and the audience commodity. | What is being sold, and how does audience activity enter the economic relationship? |
| Herbert I. Schiller | Corporate communication power and international dependence. | How do communication industries connect with wider economic and political power? |
| Nicholas Garnham, Graham Murdock and Peter Golding | Cultural production, institutions, inequality and the organisation of media. | How are the conditions of cultural production linked to public life? |
| Robert W. McChesney | Media history, democratic communication and policy struggles. | Which decisions built the system, and when could its direction have changed? |
| Vincent Mosco | Commodification, spatialization and structuration as entry points. | How can these processes reveal connections among resources, institutions and agency? |
| Janet Wasko | Media industries, research traditions and the relationship with other approaches. | What combination of historical, institutional and empirical methods does the inquiry need? |
North American and British scholarship supplied major contributions. The field also developed through debates over development, dependency, international communication and communication rights in other regions. These histories cannot be reduced to one institution or a single founding figure.
Follow what becomes a commodity, what extends across space and what reproduces power.
Mosco’s three entry points give the analysis a structure. They identify processes to investigate, not three stages that every media organisation passes through.
From useful activity to exchange.
Investigate how communication, audience access or labour becomes organised as something that can generate exchange value.
Teaching example: a freely available lesson attracts viewers, while advertising placements around it generate revenue.
Follow the relation: what is sold, who purchases it, who supplies the activity, and who receives the income?
Across distance, through institutions.
Investigate how communication reorganises space and time, enabling institutions to extend their operations and coordinate activity across locations.
Teaching example: a media group centralises editing while commissioning reports from several cities.
Follow the relation: which decisions move to the centre, which tasks remain local, and who gains the ability to coordinate them?
Structures are reproduced—and contested.
Investigate how social relationships shape action and how people’s practices maintain or change those relationships.
Teaching example: insecure contracts affect who can refuse an assignment; collective negotiation may change those conditions.
Follow the relation: how do class, gender, location and other relationships enter access, authority and everyday practice?
Read the three together
A regional reporting network can expand geographically through digital systems, sell content and advertising access, and organise work through unequal contracts. Studying only its geographic reach would miss its revenue relations and its distribution of authority.
Examine the relationships that organise communication and distribute the capacity to act.
Who owns assets, supplies funds and controls budgets?
Who creates, edits, moderates and maintains the work?
Who controls routes to audiences and the terms of access?
Which rules, institutions and public choices organise the field?
Who can access, interpret, participate and make demands?
Original teaching map. These are connected sites of inquiry, not a fixed sequence or a measured causal model.
What is the product—and who is working?
Commodification is easiest to understand when we specify the transaction. A publisher can sell an article subscription. A broadcaster can sell advertising placements around a programme. A production company can purchase a freelancer’s services. These transactions involve different resources and different dependencies.
| Object | Illustrative arrangement | Question about power |
|---|---|---|
| Content | A publisher sells access to a specialist report. | Who can afford access, who owns the rights, and which subjects attract investment? |
| Audiences | An advertising-funded service offers advertisers opportunities to reach selected viewers. | How are audiences measured and valued, and how do those measures affect programming or publication? |
| Labour | Reporters, editors, technicians and moderators work under paid contracts. | Who controls the work, sets its pace, bears its risks and captures its returns? |
Smythe and the audience commodity
In his 1977 essay, Dallas Smythe argues that advertiser-supported media should be studied through the production and sale of audiences, not only through the meanings of programmes. This directs attention towards the economic activity organised around viewing and readership.
Use the argument as an invitation to investigate the advertising relationship. It does not mean that advertisers literally purchase people, that every audience member is passive, or that one explanation fits every media business.
Separate audience access from a sale of personal data
An advertiser may purchase a placement aimed at an audience category while the intermediary retains the underlying data. That arrangement differs from selling a dataset to a third party. Establish what a particular business actually sells before describing its data practices.
Likewise, generating value through participation does not make every online action equivalent to a paid job. User activity, salaried employment, freelance work and unpaid promotional labour can enter the same system through different relationships.
Use value and exchange value
A local report may help residents understand a water shortage: that is a use the report serves. The same report may attract subscriptions, advertising or licensing income: those are ways it enters exchange. Public usefulness and commercial return can coincide, but they need not.
Count the centres of control, as well as the brands.
Ten news brands do not necessarily mean ten independent owners. A single group may own several titles. Conversely, two organisations with different owners may rely on the same agency material or distribution service. Ownership structure and content diversity are related questions, but they require different evidence.
Expansion at the same stage.
A publisher acquires other publishers. Investigate shared ownership, market share, competition and the editorial arrangements across the acquired titles.
Control across stages.
A company operates production, distribution and a route to viewers. Investigate whether that position changes the terms offered to independent producers.
Presence across media forms.
A group owns a newspaper, radio stations and a digital service. Ask what resources, decisions or reporting are shared across them.
Links with other industries.
A media owner also operates businesses outside media. Identify potential conflicts and then examine how editorial decisions are protected or influenced.
A concentration exercise
Suppose a fictional, clearly defined media market has five ownership groups. Their shares of a chosen revenue measure are shown below. Treat these as group shares, with subsidiaries consolidated.
| Ownership group | Share of the defined revenue measure | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| A | 35% | 35% |
| B | 25% | 60% |
| C | 20% | 80% |
| D | 10% | 90% |
| E | 10% | 100% |
The four-firm concentration ratio (CR4) is the combined share of the four largest groups: 35 + 25 + 20 + 10 = 90%. This describes the selected revenue measure. It does not measure viewpoint diversity, editorial independence or the proportion of citizens exposed to each view.
Before using a concentration measure, specify the market, geography, period, unit and data source. Advertising revenue, subscription revenue, viewing time and audience reach are not interchangeable measures. Audience reach can overlap across services and should not simply be added as though users were exclusive.
A revenue model can shape the work without issuing an order.
A commercial team need not tell an editor to cancel an investigation for economic pressure to matter. A smaller reporting budget, fewer local correspondents or a target for rapid publication can change what the newsroom is able to produce.
These are mechanisms to examine, not conclusions to assume. Follow the route from funding to resources, from resources to routines, and from routines to published work. Ask where professional rules, collective action or editorial judgement interrupt that route.
| Arrangement | What it can support | What to investigate |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising | A service accessible without a direct charge to each user. | Dependence on major advertisers, audience metrics and protections between commercial and editorial decisions. |
| Subscriptions or membership | A direct relationship with readers and recurring income. | Affordability, excluded audiences, retention pressures and whose needs define the product. |
| Donations, grants or philanthropy | Reporting that may attract insufficient commercial revenue. | Donor concentration, grant conditions, continuity and disclosure. |
| Public funding | Services and reporting organised around a public remit. | Appointment processes, funding stability, accountability and independence from political direction. |
| Cooperative or community funding | Participation by workers or a community in ownership and priorities. | Who can join, how decisions are made, resource limits and conflicts within the community. |
| Mixed funding | Reduced reliance on a single income stream. | Whether diversification reduces dependence or introduces several competing pressures. |
Labour is part of the explanation
Investigative capacity depends on time, security, skills and support. A reporter paid per published item may face different incentives from a salaried reporter assigned a six-week investigation. Neither contract alone determines professional conduct, but each organises opportunities and risks differently.
Study less visible work too: translation, verification, editing, technical maintenance, audience support and moderation. If an account celebrates inexpensive production while excluding these tasks, ask whose costs have disappeared from the calculation.
Journalism and the public interest
Markets reward what can attract payment, attention or commercial demand. A public-interest claim asks an additional question: what information do people need to understand and influence the conditions of their lives? Reporting can serve that need even where its immediate commercial return is weak.
Markets are organised through public decisions.
Ownership rules, access to infrastructure, public funding, spectrum arrangements and intellectual property frameworks help organise media production and circulation. Political economy asks how such arrangements were established, whose proposals prevailed and what consequences followed.
The state enters through several roles: rule-maker, funder, infrastructure provider, purchaser and sometimes media operator. These roles can support access and public service, create dependence or constrain expression. An analysis must identify the institution, decision and mechanism involved.
Study a policy as a process
- Define the disputed problem. Who described it as a problem, and whose experience was missing?
- Recover the alternatives. Which options were proposed, rejected or kept outside debate?
- Identify influence. Who had access to decision makers, expertise, organised support or financial resources?
- Trace implementation. What changed in practice, and what remained unchanged?
- Evaluate distribution. Who gained opportunities, who bore costs and who could seek revision?
McChesney’s critical junctures
A critical juncture is a period when established arrangements become unusually open to contest and consequential decisions can set a durable direction. McChesney connects communication change with technological disruption, declining legitimacy of existing journalism and wider political crisis or reform.
The lecture discusses his suggestion that critical junctures tend to arise when at least two of these three conditions coincide. Read this as a historically grounded proposition to examine, not a universal predictive formula. The presence of a new technology alone does not establish that a critical juncture has occurred.
To investigate one, identify a wider range of feasible choices, competing actors, decisions made and their durable institutional effects. A busy news cycle or a temporary controversy is not sufficient evidence.
Communication can cross borders while power remains uneven.
A news video can travel internationally in seconds. Producing it, finding it, understanding it and earning from it can remain unevenly distributed. Spatialization therefore raises questions about command, ownership and dependence, as well as the speed of circulation.
Follow the chain across locations
A fictional documentary may be commissioned in one country, edited in another, translated elsewhere and distributed through an internationally operating service. Map where contracts are set, rights are held, decisions are made and income is retained. A geographically dispersed production chain can still concentrate authority.
Development requires more than devices
The lecture challenges the expectation that introducing communication technology automatically produces development. Ask how affordability, skills, language, relevant content, institutional support and decision-making power affect what people can do with access.
A shared household phone does not necessarily offer every member the same opportunity to study or publish. A local-language creator may reach a substantial audience while receiving weak production support. Investigate the specific conditions rather than treating connectivity as a complete measure of participation.
Inequality is reproduced through practice
Income, gender, geography and other social relations can shape entry into media work, promotion, safety and access to technology. Structuration asks how these relationships are reproduced through recruitment, contracts, routines and everyday choices—and how people contest them.
The international communication debate
The 1980 report Many Voices, One World belongs to the history of debate over communication imbalances and a more equitable international order. It was the work of UNESCO’s International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, chaired by Seán MacBride. It should not be attributed to one media scholar.
Use this history to frame questions about whose accounts circulate, who controls communication resources and how different societies can participate in shaping the system. Distinguish those questions from an assumption that every cross-border cultural encounter produces the same result.
Distribution is also a site of control.
A publisher can own its articles while depending on another organisation for discovery, advertising access or delivery. Political economy therefore follows control beyond the newsroom’s legal boundary.
Poell, Nieborg and van Dijck’s concept of platformisation examines how platform infrastructures, economic arrangements and governance extend into other sectors and cultural practices. For media analysis, ask how a producer’s work becomes organised around the terms of an intermediary.
| Site of inquiry | Concrete question | Evidence to seek |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery and visibility | Who can change how material is found? | Published rules, documented changes, referral patterns and producer responses. |
| Revenue and access | Who sets payment, commission or eligibility terms? | Contracts, historical terms and income records where available. |
| Data and measurement | Who defines the metrics and sees the underlying information? | Measurement documentation, access permissions and differences among dashboards. |
| Labour | Who produces, labels, checks and moderates the material? | Work arrangements, interviews and evidence of task allocation. |
| Contest and exit | Can a producer challenge a decision or reach audiences elsewhere? | Appeal procedures, switching costs and use of alternative routes. |
AI: follow resources and task organisation
A fictional newsroom buys an AI service to draft summaries. A political economy analysis asks who supplies the system, controls its terms, pays for production and checking, and decides how any savings are used. It also asks whose source material enters the process and under what arrangements.
“The tool saves time” is not yet an account of the labour process. Measure time spent drafting, verifying, correcting, supervising and handling failures. The work may shrink, shift or increase in different parts of the organisation.
Separate business incentives from a specific causal claim
A service organised around frequent engagement may create incentives to publish often. To explain a particular editorial change, establish what changed in the system, how the newsroom responded and which other factors were operating. Revenue incentives alone do not prove that an algorithm caused a disputed story.
Trace the mechanism before reaching the conclusion.
Open each fictional case after identifying the relevant dependencies. Use the same approach throughout: arrangement, mechanism, evidence, alternative explanation.
Case 1 · The advertiser and the housing investigation
Scene: A local newsroom delays a housing investigation. A large property advertiser supplies an important part of its income. Observers immediately attribute the delay to commercial pressure.
- Political economy question
- Does advertiser dependence influence the resources or editorial decisions available for this reporting?
- Possible mechanism
- Direct intervention, anticipated loss of income, a reduced investigation budget or an informal rule about commercial relationships.
- Evidence
- The reporting timeline, available editorial records, funding concentration, interviews and comparable decisions. Establish the specific route of influence.
- Alternative explanation
- The evidence may have been incomplete, the subject may not have responded, or an unrelated staffing shortage may have delayed the work.
Defensible conclusion: advertiser dependence identifies a relationship worth investigating. A claim that the advertiser caused this delay requires more evidence.
Case 2 · The creator cooperative and the distribution service
Scene: A cooperative of local-language creators owns its productions. A distribution service changes its fictional revenue-sharing terms, and the group’s income falls.
- Political economy question
- How does dependence on distribution affect the cooperative’s practical autonomy?
- Possible mechanism
- New payment terms reduce income from the same level of activity, while leaving the distribution service in control of access to the audience.
- Evidence
- Old and new terms, views and income across comparable periods, alternative distribution options and the group’s negotiations.
- Alternative explanation
- Changes in audience demand, publication frequency or advertiser spending may also have contributed to the fall.
Defensible conclusion: ownership of content and control over circulation are distinct. Determine how much of the income change follows from each documented factor.
Case 3 · AI summaries and the invisible verification shift
Scene: A fictional newsroom reports that drafting a summary now takes ten fewer minutes. Editors say that checking sources and correcting errors has increased their workload.
- Political economy question
- Has the organisation reduced total work, shifted work between roles, or changed who bears risk?
- Possible mechanism
- Automation reduces initial drafting while transferring verification and accountability to a smaller editorial team.
- Evidence
- Task-level time records, output quality, error corrections, staffing and pay arrangements before and after adoption.
- Alternative explanation
- A new publishing quota or changes in topic complexity could explain part of the added workload.
Defensible conclusion: a saving in one task does not demonstrate an organisation-wide saving. Examine the complete workflow and the distribution of gains and burdens.
Explain structural power without erasing practice.
The conditions behind the message.
- It brings ownership, revenue, labour and infrastructure into communication analysis.
- It examines how public decisions organise markets and institutions.
- It treats inequality and access as relations to investigate.
- It connects historical change with present arrangements.
- It asks how alternative systems could serve public needs.
The route from structure to outcome.
- Ownership alone does not establish the cause of a particular story.
- Audience interpretation cannot be inferred from production arrangements.
- Institutions and workers can resist or redirect pressures.
- National, regional and local differences require attention.
- Normative commitments need to remain distinct from empirical findings.
Connect approaches rather than caricature them
| Approach | Typical question | Connection to political economy |
|---|---|---|
| Media economics | How do firms, costs, competition and demand operate? | Critical political economy adds sustained questions about power, history, distribution and public values; economic methods can contribute to that inquiry. |
| Cultural and reception studies | How are meanings produced, interpreted and lived? | Combine attention to meaning and audience practice with the conditions of production and circulation. |
| Propaganda Model | How do structural filters shape news in the model’s account? | A specific framework within a wider field of inquiry; not a synonym for all political economy. |
| Gatekeeping Theory | How are items selected and shaped along their route? | Investigate how funding, routines, technology and authority organise particular gates. |
Avoid three shortcuts
Do not replace a mechanism with a motive. “They wanted profit” does not explain which decision changed, how it changed or why a particular outcome followed.
Do not count brands as independent voices. Consolidate ownership where relevant, then assess editorial diversity separately.
Do not treat resistance as an exception to society. Union activity, professional norms, audience organisation and institutional safeguards belong inside the analysis of power.
Listen for the relationship behind each example.
Watch Dr. USP’s Political Economy of Media lecture. Keep a sheet with four columns: concept, relationship, mechanism and evidence.
If the player is unavailable, open the lecture on YouTube ↗. Cues follow the supplied transcript and are approximate. Historical examples in the lecture should be read in their original setting.
| Approximate cue | Listen for | Write one response |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00–07:45 | The scope of political economy and Mosco’s three entry points. | Explain each entry point using a single newsroom or platform case. |
| 07:45–13:15 | History, social totality, moral philosophy, praxis and research traditions. | Distinguish an empirical finding from an evaluative principle. |
| 13:15–20:30 | Journalism, policy, public interest and the organisation of media power. | Identify a mechanism linking funding to a newsroom practice. |
| 20:30–24:30 | Critical junctures, technology, legitimacy and political change. | State what evidence would distinguish a critical juncture from temporary disruption. |
| 24:30–31:30 | Development, digital journalism, labour, inequalities and future research. | Propose a research question that combines an institutional arrangement with audience or worker experience. |
Move from the label to the relationship.
Choose an answer before opening the explanation. These self-check questions collect no responses and store no score.
01 Which question most clearly expresses a political economy approach?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: B. The approach connects communication with resources, institutions and power relations. Other textual questions may contribute, but they do not by themselves supply this account.
02 Which set contains Mosco’s three entry points?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: D. These are processes through which to investigate the political economy of communication, not a three-stage transmission sequence.
03 Which example most directly illustrates vertical integration?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: A. Vertical integration connects stages of a production and distribution chain. Acquiring firms at the same stage is typically horizontal integration.
04 In the audience commodity argument, the central question concerns:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: C. Smythe redirects analysis towards the economic organisation of audiences. The argument does not establish uniform interpretation or literal ownership of people.
05 Five groups have shares of 35%, 25%, 20%, 10% and 10%. Their CR4 is:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: B. The four-firm concentration ratio sums the four largest shares: 35 + 25 + 20 + 10 = 90. Its meaning depends on the market and measure specified.
06 A newsroom receives public funding. What should an analyst conclude immediately?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: D. A funding category is not an automatic verdict. Examine the rules and practices that organise authority and independence.
07 Which example best illustrates structuration?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: A. Structuration connects social relationships and agency: practices can maintain or contest the structures within which people act.
08 What is the strongest claim supported by common ownership of several news brands alone?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: C. The ownership finding is important, but does not itself measure content, audience interpretation or the extent of editorial autonomy.
09 A service sells targeted advertising placements while retaining the underlying user data. This:
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: B. Different transactions need different descriptions. Establish how audience access and data are used in the arrangement being studied.
10 What would strengthen an argument that a period was a critical juncture?
Reveal answer and explanation
Answer: D. A critical-juncture claim concerns an opening for consequential change and the path that follows. Disruption alone does not establish it.
Build a media power dossier.
Activity 1 · Follow one media organisation
Choose a news outlet, production company, community service or creator network. Prepare a two-page dossier using public records and clearly identified sources. Separate confirmed facts, reported claims and your own inferences.
- Ownership: distinguish the public-facing brand from its legal owner and wider group. Record the date of the information.
- Funding: identify documented income sources. Do not invent revenue shares where accounts are unavailable.
- Work: describe what is known about staffing, commissioning and production. Mark gaps in the evidence.
- Distribution: identify major routes to audiences and dependencies on intermediaries.
- Policy: locate the relevant public decisions or institutional rules. For a current legal claim, consult the current primary record.
- Public consequences: choose a question about access, participation, reporting capacity or diversity and specify how you would investigate it.
Activity 2 · Compare funding without ranking labels
Compare two organisations with different funding arrangements. Ask how each protects editorial decisions, supports costly reporting and responds to its public. Identify both resources and dependencies. Avoid assuming that a commercial, donor-funded or public model has one inevitable result.
Research extension · Reporting capacity after restructuring
Question: How does a documented newsroom restructuring affect original local reporting?
Possible design: compare a defined period before and after the restructuring, with a suitable comparison outlet or section where feasible. Record changes in staffing, publication volume, beats and other events that could affect coverage.
Measures: define original reporting before coding. Distinguish agency copy, rewritten releases and reporting based on interviews or records. Examine the range of locations and sources as well as the number of stories.
Process evidence: use interviews and documents to trace changes in budgets, assignments, time and editorial priorities. Protect participants’ identities where disclosure could expose confidential working relationships.
Interpretation: a decline after restructuring supports a descriptive finding. A stronger causal argument needs evidence linking the change to a mechanism and consideration of rival explanations such as an altered news agenda or another staffing change.
Evaluate a proposed intervention
Propose one change: a funding safeguard, worker representation, improved transparency, support for underserved reporting or a less dependent distribution route. State the problem, the responsible institution, the resources needed and a way to assess the result.
| Type of claim | Example | What would support it? |
|---|---|---|
| Descriptive | “One donor supplies most of the documented grant income.” | Dated accounts or reliable funding disclosures. |
| Causal | “The funding change reduced investigative reporting time.” | A traced process, appropriate comparisons and attention to alternative explanations. |
| Normative | “The arrangement should protect affordable access.” | An explicit principle and a reasoned account of whose access matters and why. |
| Policy proposal | “A diversified funding arrangement would reduce this dependence.” | A feasible design, assessed trade-offs and evidence relevant to the predicted consequences. |
Examination and discussion prompts
- Short answer: distinguish commodification, spatialization and structuration with one linked example.
- Application: explain how a revenue model can affect journalism without direct editorial instructions.
- Essay: assess the contribution and limitations of ownership analysis in studying media diversity.
- Research discussion: how could a study combine political economy with audience research or newsroom ethnography?
Keep the concepts attached to concrete relations.
- Political economy
- An inquiry into how social and power relations organise resources, institutions and collective life.
- Commodification
- The organisation of something useful or meaningful as a resource for market exchange.
- Use value
- The usefulness of an activity or resource to people in a setting.
- Exchange value
- Its value in exchange, as distinct from the uses it may serve.
- Spatialization
- The reorganisation of space and time through communication and institutional extension.
- Structuration
- The process through which social structures and human practices shape and reproduce or change one another.
- Audience commodity
- Smythe’s argument about audiences and viewing activity within advertiser-supported communication.
- Concentration
- The distribution of ownership or a specified market measure among a limited number of actors.
- Horizontal integration
- Expansion across organisations operating at the same stage of a chain.
- Vertical integration
- Control spanning different stages of production or distribution.
- Critical juncture
- A period of unusually consequential choices that can establish a durable institutional path.
- Praxis
- The relationship between critical inquiry and action directed towards social change.
- Platformisation
- The extension of platform infrastructures, economic relations and governance into sectors and cultural practices.
- Normative claim
- A claim about what ought to be, based on a stated evaluative principle.
Core and further readings
Begin with Mosco and Wasko, then follow a particular question into the other readings. Links lead to publisher records, original journal records or a primary report record. Some full texts require institutional access.
- Mosco, V. (2009). The political economy of communication (2nd ed.). SAGE. Book DOI ↗ · Publisher record ↗
Read for the field’s foundations and the three entry points.
- Wasko, J. (2005). Studying the political economy of media and information. Comunicação e Sociedade, 7, 25–48. Article DOI ↗
Use the overview to connect research traditions, methods and neighbouring approaches.
- Smythe, D. W. (1977). Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 1(3), 1–27. Original journal archive ↗ · Full-text PDF ↗
Examine the audience commodity argument and the claims that would need testing in a particular media setting.
- McChesney, R. W. (2008). The political economy of media: Enduring issues, emerging dilemmas. Monthly Review Press. Publisher record ↗
Explore ownership, policy, journalism and democratic communication.
- McChesney, R. W. (2007). Communication revolution: Critical junctures and the future of media. The New Press. Publisher record ↗
Follow the historical argument about consequential choices and media reform.
- Golding, P., & Murdock, G. (Eds.). (1997). The political economy of the media (Vols. 1–2). Edward Elgar. Publisher record ↗
Consult the collection for a wider range of foundational arguments.
- Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & van Dijck, J. (2019). Platformisation. Internet Policy Review, 8(4). Open-access article ↗
Extend the inquiry into platform infrastructures, economic relations and governance.
- International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems. (1980). Many voices, one world: Towards a new more just and more efficient world information and communication order. UNESCO. United Nations report record ↗
Read as a historical primary document in the international communication debate.
- Dr. USP. Political economy of media [Video]. YouTube. Watch the lecture ↗
Use with this chapter’s viewing guide and applied tasks.
The chapter in six statements
- Communication depends on resources, labour, infrastructure and institutional decisions.
- Political economy asks how those arrangements distribute power and benefits.
- Commodification, spatialization and structuration reveal different but connected processes.
- Ownership and funding are starting points for tracing mechanisms, not complete explanations of content.
- Platforms, international relations and public policy organise the conditions of media production and use.
- Good research connects structural analysis with evidence of practice, experience and alternatives.
Follow power from institutions into selection and representation.
The Propaganda Model develops a specific account of structural filters. Gatekeeping Theory helps trace how selection works through people, routines and systems. Feminist Theory opens further questions about authority, labour and whose experience enters public communication.
Take one media institution through these chapters. Keep asking: who can shape the conditions under which others communicate?
Back to the chapter opening ↑