Магистратура
2021/2022
Критическая политическая экономия медиа
Статус:
Курс обязательный (Критические медиаисследования / Critical media studies)
Направление:
42.04.05. Медиакоммуникации
Кто читает:
Институт медиа
Где читается:
Факультет креативных индустрий
Когда читается:
1-й курс, 2-4 модуль
Формат изучения:
без онлайн-курса
Охват аудитории:
для своего кампуса
Прогр. обучения:
Критические медиаисследования
Язык:
английский
Кредиты:
6
Контактные часы:
96
Course Syllabus
Abstract
This course is focused on providing students main competences and approaches to critically analyze media structures, media power and relationship between media and empowered agents, such as policymakers, media corporations, international global organizations etc. The course is based on the political economic tradition of analysis of media and cultural industries, critic of their globalization, commercialization (commodification), (pseudo) neutrality etc. During the course we will refer to such names of scholars as Herbert Schiller, Vincent Mosco, Graham Murdock, Nicolas Garnham, Armand Mattelart, Robert McChesney, Ben Bagdikian. The course will be based on reading texts, writing essays and reflections on texts, making some politico-economic analysis of contemporary problems (such as power of social media, fake news, populist politics etc.)
Learning Objectives
- To provide students the critical reasoning in field of analysis of media structures
- To teach students main theoretical framework in field of media domination and commodification
- To make students able to critically assess media business, media companies in terms of their power relations
- To provide students the political economic critique of media technologies and technological determinism
Expected Learning Outcomes
- To be able to discuss the difference in modern and post-modern media propaganda.
- Able to analyze the concentration in cross-sectoral fields (such as telecommunications, IT, software etc.) and their power relations
- Able to analyze the ideology of Google
- Able to classify and define models of the media capital accumulation
- Able to define main concepts of marxian dialectics and their relevance for media studies
- Able to distinguish critical theory from uncritical
- Able to separate critical reflects from uncritical reflections on media industries
- Able to use anti-commercial critique in studying media
- Characterizes media as public good
- Classify different directions in cultural domination theories
- Critically assess the way media affects other forms of power
- Define different approaches to critique from the Frankfurt School
- Defines main risks of the pure commercialization
- Defines the notion of cultural imperialism
- Defines the notion of the Google solutionnism
- Defines the place of critical political economy among other political economic approaches to media.
- Defines the role of media as symbolic power
- Gives the main definition of power
- Identify main proponents of the positivistic vision of the media globalism (De Sola Pool, Lerner)
- Knows main concepts of critique from Horckheimer, Marcuse and Habermas
- Makes the definition of the political economy of media
- To be able to assess the role played by communication and media practices in producing and reproducing capitalist hegemony.
- To be able to critically de-construct the rhetoric on media technology
- Understand the political economic dimension of so called "Russiagate"
- Reflect on actual events and hybrid wars between countries in multipolar context
Course Contents
- Critical political economy of media among other theories
- Media and power assymmetries
- Basics of the Marxist dialectics for media studies
- Critical theory and Frankfurt School as early form of critical political economy
- Critical political Economy of media and critic of commodification
- Critical political economy of media capital concentration
- Political economy, propaganda and media imperialism (Oliver Boyd Barrett - 1)
- Mass-media and international propaganda in times of war (Oliver Boyd-Barrett 2)
- Humanitarian interventionnism and media wars (Oliver Boyd-Barrett - 3)
- Russiagate and propaganda (Oliver Boyd-Barrett - 4)
- Close Encounters: The Media and Communication as/and Capitalist Forms (Marco Briziarelli)
- Critical political economy and world media domination critique
- Political economy of cultural counterflows: chineese, indian, turkish and other counter-power.
- Political economy of Google and technological platforms (Nikos Smyrnaios)
Assessment Elements
- Reading 1
- Reading 2
- Reading 3
- Reading 4
- Written essay - Module 2
- Reading 6
- Attendance
- Report on international domination, soft power and counter-cultural flows
- Reading 7
- Collective discussion on power and counter power
- Debates on "Blindspot" in western marxism and audience commodity
- Reading 8
- Reflection on Fuchs
- Reflection 4
- Reading 5
- Reflection 6
- Collective discussion on critical theory
- essay on international platforms domination
- Collective mapping of cultural industries
- Essay 1
- Essay 2
Interim Assessment
- 2021/2022 4th module0.2 * Essay 2 + 0.2 * Written essay - Module 2 + 0.04 * Reading 4 + 0.04 * Reading 2 + 0.04 * Reading 6 + 0.04 * Reading 8 + 0.04 * Reading 5 + 0.04 * Reading 3 + 0.04 * Reading 1 + 0.08 * Reflection on Fuchs + 0.2 * Attendance + 0.04 * Reading 7
- 2022/2023 2nd module0.5 * essay on international platforms domination + 0.5 * Report on international domination, soft power and counter-cultural flows
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- Castells, M. (2013). Communication Power (Vol. 2nd edition). Oxford: OUP Oxford. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=620218
- Cinzia Bianchi. (2015). Ferruccio Rossi-Landi: language, society and semiotics. https://doi.org/10.12977/ocula44
- Fuchs, C. (2014). Social Media : A Critical Introduction. SAGE Publications Ltd.
- Fuchs, C. (2019). Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism. Pluto Press.
- Graham Murdock, & Peter Golding. (n.d.). For a Political Economy of Mass Communications.
- Graham Murdock. (2006). Blindspots about Western Marxism. A Reply to Dallas Smythe.
- GUY DEBORD. (2012). Society Of The Spectacle. [S.l.]: Bread and Circuses. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=nlebk&AN=1149446
- Ilya Yablokov. (2018). Fortress Russia : Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet World (Vol. 1). Polity.
- Ithiel de Sola POOL. (1983). Technologies of Freedom. Harvard University Press.
- Johan Galtung. (1990). Cultural Violence. Journal of Peace Research, 3, 291.
- John B. Thompson. (2013). Media and Modernity : A Social Theory of the Media. Polity.
- Liebes, T., & Katz, E. (1986). Dallas and Genesis: Primordiality and Seriality in Popular Culture.
- Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2001). Capital : A Critique of Political Economy. Electric Book Co.
- McChesney, R. W., & Recorded Books, I. (2015). Rich Media, Poor Democracy : Communication Politics in Dubious Times. New York: The New Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1015632
- Nicholas Garnham, & Céline Morin. (2015). Political Economy and Cultural Studies: Reconciliation or Divorce? Réseaux, 192(4), 45–65. https://doi.org/10.3917/res.192.0045
- Rosalind Gill, & Andy Pratt. (n.d.). 2008 “In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work” Theory, Culture.
- Schiller, H. I. (1967). Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 23(4), 4. https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.1967.11455050
- Schiller, H. I. (1991). Culture, Inc : The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression. New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=169118
- Sillito, J. R. (1989). A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. Library Journal, 114(8), 90.
- Western mainstream media and the Ukraine crisis : a study in conflict propaganda, Boyd-Barrett, O., 2018
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- Armand Mattelart, & Michael Palmer. (1993). Shaping the European Advertising Scene. Commercial free speech in search of legitimacy. Réseaux. The French Journal of Communication, 1(1), 9–26. https://doi.org/10.3406/reso.1993.3268
- Marcuse, H. (2011). Negations: essays in critical theory. London : MayFlyBooks, 2009.
- Nicholas Garnham, & Christian Fuchs. (2014). Revisiting the Political Economy of Communication. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v12i1.553
- Peter Golding, & Graham Murdock. (2015). Ideology and the Mass Media: The Question of Determination. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.5BD12B07