Traditional Study of Media
· Cultural Studies
· Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, Roger Silverstone, David Morley
· Classical and Neo-Classical Political Economy
· Roots Adam Smith
· Pluralist
· Dennis Mcquail among others
· Critical Political Economy
· Murdock, G., Golding, P., Garnham, N.
Traditional Media and Cultural Studies: Study of Meaning
· How culture reinforces dominant ideology
· How culture reproduces ideology
· How alternative interpretations are excluded
· Study of media texts at the moment of exchange
· Audience studies and reading of texts
Critical Political Economists: These are crucial but provide half picture
· Necessary look at economic context of production and how impact meaning and output
· Accountancy hedges Creativity
Classical/Neo Classical Political Economy
· Deal with allocation of scarce resources
· All resources scarce
· Mechanism to allocate is market
· Notion dynamic relationship between producers and consumers
· Economic self interest is best guide
· Market is best regulator
· Price Mechanism
Critical Political Economy Critique
· Price Mechanism made obsolete by rise of Brands
· Large Corporations and competition is questioned in context of monopolies and oligopolies
· Moral issues
· Not all have same power
· Unequal Power relations
· Freedom and consumer choice
· Note notion of market and consumer choice extended intensely to communications in past two decades,
· Marketisation of public sector
· Market criteria as primary mechanism for evaluation of media organisations
Critical Political Economy argues it is crucial to examine power and differs from mainstream economic approaches
· Holistic
· Historical
· Concern between capitalist enterprise and public intervention
· Beyond technical efficiency to deal with justice and moral issues
Critical Political Economy: beyond economics
“In the case of the cultural industries we are particularly concerned to trace the impact of economic dynamics on the range and diversity of public cultural expression, and on its availability to different social groups”
Critical Political Economy (CPE) differs from
· Instrumentalists (Milliband, R. Herman, E., Chomsky, N.,)/Economic determinists
· Notion that media are instruments of ruling class
· Instrument of domination
· Media output only consonant with ruling class interests
· Notion media owners mouthpieces for ruling class interests
CPE: More complex dynamics
· Partly right as these elites do have privileged access
· But, contradictions and ambiguities
CPE differ from structuralists and
· Notion powerful structures permanent and immovable
· Evidence shows more dynamic and changing
Economic dynamics do have a central role but need to analyse other aspects also; so
Production, Distribution, Consumption
BUT
CPC: start at production
Media Production: key features historically
· Media production increasingly part of large corporation
· Concentration of ownership pattern well established by mid 1950s
· Increased cross media ownership
· Increased recently by privatisation
· Increased by liberalisation
· Dominant position of corporations in providing culture
· Increased involvement of other industries via advertising and sponsorship
· Note: financial viability of large sections of media depend on industry
· Increasingly same small group of corporations in all markets
· Note advertising financed media is not free
CPE: Three analytical concerns
1. Production of culture and how range and diversity of output can be shaped
2. How representations and meaning in texts are circumscribed by political economy
3. Political economy of cultural consumption
1. Ownership and Production of Culture and Communications
Examples:
· Warner Brothers and Time Warner
· CNN, AOL etc
· Bertelsman
· News Corporation
· Sky News
· Times
· Sun
· 20th Century Fox
· Collins Publishing
· Europe
· Australia
· US
· Asia and China
· Power being extended world-wide
· Power also over small concerns
· Interlinkages with other companies and industries through stockholding
· Interlinkages through financing/banks/debt
# Examine Corporations: Who controls and in whose interests; 2 types of control
· Allocative control (those who allocate resources and have power)
· Operational Control (managers, editors, producers etc )
Also 2 types of Ownership
· Legal Ownership
· All individual shareholders
· Economic Ownership
· Large institutions at top
· Determine executive board and policy
Economic ownership and allocative control.
· 2 types of influence
1. Economic Context and profit maximisation
· Range of options and pressures
· Limits
· That is Accountancy hedges creativity
· Impacts what gets shown, produced and presented
2. Personnel (intentional action) and ideological
· Biographies
· Interests
Question: Would the owners of the Sun allow the editor to turn it into a radical newspaper?
Question: Would Mr Leahy allow Tesco to become a Co-Operative
But: Murdock and Golding
2. Critical Political Economy and Texts and Meaning
· Note most in cultural studies reject notion of culture sustaining systems of domination
· Key question for CPE: can the economics of production shape
· Public discourse i.e. the range of debates available
· Little in raw state but some spaces
· Meaning within a text
· Example of Co-productions
· Representations of England
· Representations of Irish
· Exports
3. Critical Political Economy and Consumption
· Cultural Studies reject notion of passive consumer and cultural dupe
· “Heroic resistance fighters against economic determinists” (Murdock and Golding)
· Advocates of free market: notion consumer is sovereign
BUT
· CPE agree consumer not passive but note that consumer not all powerful
· Access by price so income of individuals and households
· Cultural commodities
· Technical equipment
· Digital divide
· Study shows ownership and access differentiated by income in UK P77
· Study from US indicates similar pattern
· Access not only dependent on money
· Tools and knowledge to turn information and raw culture into knowledge and cultural capital also unequally divided
David Morley (Cultural Studies) notes that he ability to actively and critically decode a text cannot be confused with the power to set the agenda and the power to encode meaning.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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