Page 177 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

156 Critical investigations in political economy

Conclusion
The critical political economy tradition is guided by critical social theory to
identify and address problems. Critical scholarship from the 1970s established
studies of advertising finance but tended to provide an aerial view with limited close
observation of advertising practices and processes. The rise of sociological and
culturalist studies of advertising fills this gap but tends towards an uncritical
account of marketing, partly in its effort to distinguish itself from earlier critical
discourses. The extension of advertiser power, as well as its limits, cries out for
analysis and public debate. What is needed now is critical scholarship that is
informed by the theoretical sophistication of new media studies and which
includes a close attention to material practices, but which continues to ask
and address larger, critical questions about the ways that advertising shapes
communication environments.

Notes
1 Smythe answered with a rejoinder to Murdock (Smythe 1978; see also Smythe 1981:
22–51).
2 Previously in 2009, Facebook paid $9.5 million to charities to settle another class
action on privacy concerning Beacon, the company’s short-lived sharing of users’
purchases that caused a storm of protest.