The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media [Hardcover]

Some advocates and more than a few critics have misconstrued the political economy of media as a unified field of inquiry. The authors from this volume, by contrast, draw from a more diverse stream of the schools of thought signified by this tradition: Neoclassical Economics, Radical Media Political Economy, Schumpeterian Institutional Political Economy, and the Cultural Industries School. The book as a whole is as alert to developments in our main objects of analysismedia institutions, technologies, markets, uses and societyas it is to changes in the world around us, including current trends in communication and media studies.

The contributors show that digital media are disrupting entire media industries, but without erasing the past. Throughout, the impact of the unprecedented wave of media consolidation in the late-1990s and the financial crisis of the past few years loom large. The authors also suggest that there is no supra logic of total system integration that spans the network media, while insisting that one media sector is not the same as the next. Social networking activities often beg, pilfer and borrow content from traditional media , but it remains the case that Time Warner, Comcast, the BBC and News Corp. are very different creatures than Apple, Baidu, Facebook or Google. In other words, even in the age of convergence and remix culture, different media continue to display their own distinctive political economies, as the volume's titleThe Political Economies of Mediasignals.

The contributors show that digital media are disrupting entire media industries, but without erasing the past and insist that one media sector is not the same as the next. As the title signals even in the age of convergence and remix culture, different media continue to display their own distinctive political economies.

Dwayne Winseck is Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, Canada.

Dal Yong Jilc'