Page 95 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

74 Mapping approaches and themes

Scarcity and supply. Does the evident proliferation of sources of supply resolve,
or significantly diminish, concerns about provision whether informational or
cultural? (chapters four and five)
Cultural convergence. Is there a mutually beneficial alignment of corporate
provision with user choice such that problems of media provision have
diminished?

The critical tradition has to reflect on changing conditions, the salience of its
theoretical positions and on the manner in which it identifies and addresses
problems. Its capacity to do so is questioned by critics of the approach. On the
contrary I will argue that CPE’s focus on resources raises the most salient critical
questions about contemporary media and connects these with broader concerns
about human life and human flourishing. Critical political economy is concerned
with the production, distribution and consumption of resources used to sustain
human existence. It is concerned with the manner in which resources are distributed
and shared, but also how they are created and cultivated. The CPE tradition has
certainly generated highly pessimistic accounts of media cultures and processes
and it is right that the grounds for optimism are continually assessed at every
point. Yet such evaluation should arise from analysis and be judged on the
quality of that analysis. The CPE tradition is sceptical about tendencies to
presentism and smooth evolutionary transition. At their best CPE scholars insist
on examining tensions, contradiction, the co-presence of antinomies and gradations
between them.
Any analysis needs to have regard for its explanatory limits. This applies when
selecting a broad approach such as CPE, as well as at the micro level of selection
of topics and research design. US political economist McChesney (1999: 31)
argues that the core ‘structural factors’ influencing the nature of media content
(including the overall pursuit of profit, size of firm, levels of media concentration
and competition, advertiser influence, ‘the specific interests of owners, managers
and, to a lesser extent, employees’) provide a ‘context (and a trajectory)’ for
understanding media content, but ‘can only rarely provide a detailed under-
standing of specific media content’. I have described this reflexive appreciation
of explanatory limits as humility (Hardy 2008). Acknowledging explanatory
limits helps to promote the more open, eclectic and synthesising perspectives
required for the vitality of critical media studies. CPE analysis benefits from
recognising and drawing on specialist tools and approaches, such as textual
analysis and semiosis, pyscho-social and psychological studies. Yet, in advocating
intellectual humility, I do not advocate a self-limiting (ontological) account of
political economic analysis. Throughout this book I aim to demonstrate that CPE
analysis does not fit the reductive caricature of a mechanistic Marxist account of
‘production’. There is no aspect of communications processes that does not
connect to communication resources and so have a political economic dimension,
even if a great many other aspects rightly command our attention too. CPE
analysis engages with content, audiences and use, labour and sociology. To the