Page 97 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

76 Mapping approaches and themes

media workers, mostly conducted by liberal scholars (Gans 1980) but with others
pursuing more critical themes such as Born’s (2004) fieldwork in different
departments of the BBC during a period from 1996 to 2001 when corporatisation
and new managerialism coexisted uncomfortably with a ‘counter discourse’ of
public service values. CPE research is not limited methodologically and draws
on the range of methods from the social sciences and humanities. These include
historical and archival research, documentation analysis; quantitative and quali-
tative content analysis, textual and discourse analysis; surveys, interviews and
focus groups.

Notes

1 Under perfect competition four conditions pertain: first, together with allocative effi-
ciency, described above, there is productive efficiency; second, goods will be produced
at the lowest possible cost. Third, price will not rise above marginal cost, the cost of
supplying one extra consumer (in contrast to monopolists’ ability to retain high prices)
and fourth, competitive markets will encourage innovation and product development,
thus maximising consumer benefits.
2 Such arguments influenced the Davies Committee report on BBC funding and were
reflected in speeches and policy by successive Labour Culture Secretaries (Hardy
2004).
3 For a more comparative-normative perspective responsive to the diversity of media
systems see Buckley et al. 2008; for theoretical elaboration see Christians et al. 2009.