Page 28 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

What (is) political economy of the media? 7

is associated with the Institute of Social Research established at the University of
Frankfurt in 1923. The ‘Frankfurt School’, as it became known, investigated
culture in ways that revised, and revived, Marxist theory and integrated this
‘Western Marxism’ with other social theories and with Freudian psychoanalysis.
These scholars rejected positivist claims that knowledge could be value-free
and argued instead for a critical–normative perspective that was also reflective
about how forms of knowledge contributed to sustaining or challenging existing
social conditions. This approach was critical in that it assessed knowledge and
social practice against normative values such as fairness in the distribution of
wealth and resources. Its origins lie in the analysis of capitalist economies and
authoritarian political systems, ranging from fascist to parliamentary, in the
1930s and 1940s. Yet the scholarship that evolved is not restricted to Marxist
thought or even socialist principles. Its enduring values are rather liberal and
democratic ones; ‘[i]t is committed to political enfranchisement, freedom of
speech and intellectual inquiry, and social justice’ (McChesney 2004a: 47).
The term ‘critical’ then helps to connect together traditions of critique as well
as values of investigating and questioning arrangements. Yet it also has ‘negative’
associations: we do not (always) appreciate criticism; naysayers with relentlessly
negative attitudes may be viewed as rigidly prejudging events, or just not great
company. Whether ‘critical’ is too constraining and self-limiting an organising
term for the approaches discussed here is an important question, but descriptively
at least it helps to delineate approaches which I hope to show are anything but
rigid or ‘negative’.
Critical political economy rests on a central claim: different ways of organising
and financing communications have implications for the range and nature of
media content, and the ways in which this is consumed and used. Recognising
that the goods produced by the media industries are at once economic and cultural,
this approach calls for attention to the interplay between the symbolic and
economic dimensions of the production of meaning. One direction of enquiry,
then, is from media production to meaning-making and consumption, but the
other is to consider the relationship of media and communication systems to
wider forces and processes in society. It is by combining both that CPE seeks to
ask ‘big’ questions about media.
CPE analysis is not defined or limited in respect of its object of analysis. CPE
considers all kinds of communication processes, although it tends to ignore some,
such as psycho-cognitive and affective processes. It is not defined or limited in
respect of methods of analysis. A great variety of research methods are used,
although documentation analysis, historical research, textual and media content
analysis, economic, statistical and market analysis are the most prevalent. What
characterises CPE above all are the questions asked and the orientation of
scholars. Whose voices and concerns get to be heard? How are people, ideas and
values represented in media discourses – and what is it that affects how this
occurs? What is the quality of information, ideas and imagery available through
media, and to whom is it available? This tradition asks questions about power in