Page 35 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

14 Mapping approaches and themes

consequences for the way in which both public issues and socio-ethnic groups
were ‘framed’.
How do media relate to power sources in society? Whose interests are repre-
sented? Who is represented in media? Who has access to communication
resources – and what can they do with them? Political economy argues that to
answer such questions we need not only the analysis of texts, or texts and readers,
but analysis of the forces and interests shaping media and the conditions of
production. How you judge political economy will depend on how you view the
focus of investigation – the questions it poses and tries to answer. It will also
depend on whether you share perspectives that insist there are ‘problems’ in our
media systems, whether you are persuaded that it is important to examine these
problems and consider how to try to put them right. Critical political economy of
communications is a critical realist approach that investigates problems connected with the
political and economic organisation of communication resources.

Critical political economy and its others
The tradition of critical political economy is commonly defined, in part, by way
of its distinction from three main alternatives: neoclassical/mainstream media
economics, liberal pluralist communication studies and cultural studies (Mosco
2009: 128; Hesmondhalgh 2013). Two are broadly defined as ‘mainstream’
traditions (media economics and liberal communications) while the third is a rival
cluster of radical approaches. Defining CPE from its ‘others’ has value but also
limitations; it risks perpetuating a tired, rigid classification and entrenching crude
and out-dated divisions of a field that is ceaselessly changing. It is also important
to resist imposing a false coherence upon any of these approaches, all of which
have great internal diversity, dynamic interconnections and complex affiliations.
We will engage with the value and validity of these divisions more fully, but they
do have some explanatory value. They help us to trace, recover and reassess the
influences, points of difference, as well as the often coded shorthand, through
which analysts have worked, disagreed and debated.

Neoclassical/modern media economics

Critical political economy starkly diverges from principles of neoclassical economics
that continue to influence ‘mainstream’ economics. Neoclassical economics pre-
sumes the desirability of a capitalist market economy. This set of values is most
pronounced in neoliberal thought, where economics is harnessed to a political
programme whereby the creation of efficient and unfettered markets is
the principal goal of public policy. Neoliberalism ‘refers to the set of national
and international policies that call for business domination of all social affairs
with minimal countervailing force’ (McChesney 2001). Market competition is
promoted as the best mechanism not only for economic ‘growth’ but also for
social organisation and the distribution of resources. Yet, modern economic