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Summary
Summary
Several of the most important and influential political economists of communication working today explore a rich mix of topics and issues that link work, policy studies, and research and theory about the public sphere to the heritage of political economy. Familiar but still exceedingly important topics in critical political economy studies are well represented here: market structures and media concentration, regulation and policy, technological impacts on particular media sectors, information poverty, and media access. The book also features new topics for political economy study, including racism in audience research, the value and need for feminist approaches to political economy studies, and the relationship between the discourse of media finance and the behavior of markets.
Author Notes
Andrew Calabrese is associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Colin Sparks is professor of media studies and director of the Communication and Media Research Institute of the University of Westminster.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
The 19 essays in this collection run the gamut of approaches (expository, argumentative, critical, etc.) and topics (regulation, public sphere, audiences, capitalism, new information technology, etc.). Divided into five sections, the essays cover "political economy of communication and culture"; "capitalism, communication, the public sphere, political economy of film and broadcasting"; "new media, information society, and other obscure objects"; and "extending the boundaries of political economy." Content deals mainly with the US and England, although one chapter each is devoted to South Africa, Japan, and the European Union. Without a preface to unify such a mishmash of themes, one cannot be quite sure what the editors meant to achieve overall, but there are gems among the many pebbles. Notable are James Curran's "The Rise of the Westminster School"; John Durham Peters' history of "the marketplace of ideas" concept, in which he traces the notion only to the 1930s, not to Milton or Mill as is customary; and Robert McChesney's "Making a Molehill out of a Mountain," a rather angry portrayal of "the sad state of political economy" studies in US media scholarship. Janet Wasko's economic treatment of Hollywood, with its bottom-line mentality and creative accountancy methods, also stands out. ^BSumming Up: Optional. Graduate and research collections. J. A. Lent Temple University
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. xi |
| Part I Taking Stock of the Political Economy of Communication and Culture | |
| 1 Toward a Political Economy of Culture | p. 1 |
| 2 The Rise of the Westminster School | p. 13 |
| 3 Making a Molehill out of a Mountain: The Sad State of Political Economy in U.S. Media Studies | p. 41 |
| Part II Capitalism, Communication, and the Public Sphere | |
| 4 "The Marketplace of Ideas": A History of the Concept | p. 65 |
| 5 Capitalism and Communication: A New Era of Society or the Accentuation of Long-Term Tendencies? | p. 83 |
| 6 Kugai: The Lost Public Sphere in Japanese History | p. 95 |
| 7 Truth Commissions, Nation Building, and International Human Rights: The South African Experience and the Politics of Human Rights Post-9/11 | p. 111 |
| Part III The Political Economy of Film and Broadcasting | |
| 8 Show Me the Money: Challenging Hollywood Economics | p. 131 |
| 9 The Fight for Proportionality in Broadcasting | p. 151 |
| 10 Broadcasting and the Market: The Case of Public Television | p. 178 |
| 11 Living with Monsters: Can Broadcasting Regulation Make a Difference? | p. 194 |
| Part IV New Media, the Information Society, and Other Obscure Objects | |
| 12 Capitalism's Chernobyl? From Ground Zero to Cyberspace and Back Again | p. 211 |
| 13 New Media and the Forces of Capitalism | p. 228 |
| 14 Dismantling the Digital Divide: Rethinking the Dynamics of Participation and Exclusion | p. 244 |
| 15 Building the Information Society in EU Candidate Countries: A Long Way to Go | p. 261 |
| 16 Romanticism in Business Culture: The Internet, the 1990s, and the Origins of Irrational Exuberance | p. 286 |
| 17 The Impact of the Internet on the Existing Media | p. 307 |
| Part V Extending the Boundaries of Political Economy | |
| 18 Audiences on Demand | p. 327 |
| 19 Feminist Theory and the Political Economy of Communication | p. 342 |
| Index | p. 357 |
| About the Contributors | p. 371 |
