The Political Economies of Media and the Transformation of the Global Media Industries

Abstract

In this introductory chapter, I want to set the scene for this book and to paint a broad portrait of a certain view of communication and media studies, and the role of different political economies of the media in the fi eld. Communication and media studies often labor under the illusion that political economy comes in one fl avor, but here I suggest that we can identify at least four perspectives that have considerable currency in the fi eld. They are (1) conservative and liberal neoclassical economics; (2) radical media political economy, with two main versions, the monopoly capital and digital capitalism schools; (3) Schumpeterian institutional political economy and two recent offshoots, the creative industries and network political economy schools; and lastly (4) the cultural industries school. Of course, neither all of this volume's authors nor communication and media studies as a fi eld can be placed so neatly in these categories, but other approaches can be thought of as derivatives of them (e.g. cultural economy, neo-Marxian political economy, critical cultural political economy, and economic geography). To begin, we need to clearly specify our "object of analysis." To that end, I focus on the "network media industries," a composite of the 10 largest media and internet industries, ranked by total worldwide revenues: television, internet access, newspapers, books, fi lms, magazines, music, radio, internet advertising, and video games. These industries do not exist all on their own but are surrounded by the "social ecology of information" and fl anked, on one side, by the telecoms industries and, on the other, by the information, communication, and technology (ICT) sector. I use the concept of the network media industries in a way that follows Yochai Benkler (2006). The construct refers to the core and emergent public communications media that migrate around various distribution networks and media platforms and devices. It is not convergence, per se, but a network of media tied together through strategies, capital investment, ownership, technologies, uses, alliances, rights regimes, and so on. Methodologically and empirically, the concept is an important tool because it establishes what is included and excluded from analysis. Perhaps, however, this is just another wave of "creative destruction" that happens every so often to wipe away the old, and usher in the new, as Joseph Schumpeter (1943/1996: 83) put it in his classic, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. This, I believe, would not adequately capture the essence of the situation either. There is scant evidence to support the view that traditional media are going the way of the dinosaur, although many of the media conglomerates cobbled together near the end of the twentieth century have since been restructured, dismantled, or fallen into fi nancial disarray, as Chapters 6 and 7 in this book show. For the most part, however, the traditional media are not in crisis. Among the top 10 internet companies worldwide, 3 are well-known media conglomerates, and a...

Digital inclusion and user (dis)empowerment: a critical perspective

“…These tendencies are producing new asymmetries and hierarchies on the Internet, thus, reproducing or even reinforcing the already existing divides present in class societies. For example, most of the Internet is now for-profit-oriented, controlled by corporations in very much closed and, in some cases, even oligopolized markets (Bellamy and McChesney, 2011;Fuchs, 2011b;Winseck, 2011;Freedman, 2012;McChesney, 2013;Yong Jin, 2013).…”

“…The misfits of access and market-oriented policies In contrast with traditional media as landline phones or television, no universal service policy was applied to the distribution of the Internet or any new ICTs. The diffusion of these ICTs were (and still are), in most Western countries, left to the market, and are, as such, primarily driven by commercial interests (van Dijk, 2005;Winseck, 2011;Fuchs, 2008Fuchs, , 2011aFuchs, , 2011bCurran, 2012;McChesney, 2013). This has led to a series of perverse effects, such as the emergence of socio-spatial inequalities not only between but also within rural and urban communities (Crang et al, 2006;Curran, 2012).…”

Crisis, digitalisation and the future of the internet

“…Also, a recent study conducted in the Irish context by one of the present authors points to the growing value of synchronisation licensing through advertising as an increasingly significant pursuit of established recording and music publishing copyright holders. Equally, there is a significant picture of growth in the live music sector internationally over the past decade (Winseck, 2011;Panay, 2011).…”

Film and Video Censorship in New Zealand, 1976-1994

“…90 The process of censorship decision-making in the case studies in this thesis shows that there are subtle shifts in the grounding of 86 Dwayne Winseck, "The Political Economies of Media and the Transformation of the Global Media Industries." In The Political Economies and the Transformation of the Global Media Industries, edited by Dwayne Winseck andDal Yong Jin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 4. 87 Jon Elster, "Introduction."…”