Критическая политическая экономия медиа

Магистратура 2024/2025

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, 1-4 модуль

Формат изучения: без онлайн-курса

Охват аудитории: для своего кампуса

Прогр. обучения: Критические медиаисследования

Язык: английский

Кредиты: 12

Контактные часы: 96

Full Syllabus

Abstract

The Critical Political Economy of Media course offers students a perspective on media and communication from the standpoint of the production, accumulation and concentration of capital in the broadest sense. The main emphasis throughout the discipline is on the ‘classical’ Marxist critique of political economy, but this is not the exclusive theoretical perspective offered within the discipline. Students will be introduced to various socio-economic aspects of the emergence, development and dynamics of modern media (mass media, Internet, technological platforms and infrastructures) as economic agents and/or objects of economic interest.

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
To introduce students to major issues underpinning the political economy of media and communication (M.B.)
To develop the students’ understanding of the underlying ideological assumptions behind media technology, mediated representations and informational and communicative labor (M.B.)
To provide an array of tools to deconstruct complex social totalities saturated by capitalist media and communicative practices (M.B.)
To assist students in developing an immanent critique of Western-centric media (M.B.)
To navigate and understand the philosophical underpinnings of critical political economy of the media approaches (J.M.)
To identify the key steps of the media and culture industrialisation process and the socio-technical factors which were at play in this historical evolution (J.M.)
To take into consideration key paradigm shifts within these approaches, in particular those arising from the question of the place or function of receivers or so-called consumers of media and cultural content (J.M.)
To understand recent evolutions (collaborative web, media convergence, participatory culture, platformisation, etc.), through a broader historical perspective taking into account earlier critical political economy work looking at lesser-known phenomena and alternatives (J.M.)
To gain insight into the potential future developments in the field of media and culture industries via the study of recent work in the field covering specific areas such as the role of ideological production, audience labour or blockchain-enabled disintermediation (J.M.)

Expected Learning Outcomes

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
Able to use main CPEM arguments against notion of network power, network society, participatory culture and network activism
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
Distinguish between theory of cultural industries and theory of creative industries
Gives the main definition of power
Identify and classify main models of functionning
Identify main proponents of the positivistic vision of the media globalism (De Sola Pool, Lerner)
Identify main structural peculiarity of value in cultural industries
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
Understanding of different logics and aims of the concentration process
Use main political economy tools to analyze Google and technological platforms
Knows the key authors and different currents that have shaped this field of analysis, and the philosophical/political projects that have underpinned their research (J.M.).
Understands the relevance of both seminal/early theoretical and empirical contributions, and recent research, for the understanding of key contemporary phenomena in the media and culture industries (J.M.).
Engages with specific elements from these theoretical and empirical contributions, in relation to his or her own experiences as both early-stage media scholar and media user, producer, broad/narrowcaster, etc. (J.M.).
Offers compelling evidence of this understanding and engagement in oral seminar exchanges and in the written work expected for the two term papers (J.M.).
Employs analytical tools to dissect social imaginaries dominated by cultural commodities (M.B.).
Assesses the role played by communication and media practices in producing and reproducing capitalist hegemony (M.B.).
Understands and critically evaluates the so-called black box of current digital and algorithmic technology (M.B.).
Сritically de-constructs the rhetoric on media technology (M.B.).
Use main political economy tools to analyze Google and technological platforms (N.S.)
Defines the notion of the Google solutionnism (N.S.)
Able to analyze the ideology of Google (N.S.)

Course Contents

Course Introduction. The method of Political Economy (M.B. - 1)
Marxist Theory (M.B. - 2)
Materialism (M.B. - 3)
Mediating Symbolic and Material Value (M.B. - 4).
Capitalism and Communication (M.B - 5)
Media as Means of Production (M.B. - 6)
Paper ideas Brainstorming (M.B. - 7)
Ideology (M.B. - 8)
Nationalism (M.B. - 9)
Imperialism (M.B. - 10)
Metaphysics of Communication (M.B. - 11)
Communication Struggles (M.B. - 12)
Final Paper Presentation (M.B. - 13)
Political economy of Google and technological platforms (N.S.)
Media industrialisation: modernity and the genesis of a “new culture” (1840 – 1920) (J.M.)
Contributions of the Frankfurt school to a Critical Political Economy of Media (1920 – 1960) (J.M.)
Key approaches and evolutions in Critical Political Economy of Media (1960-1995). Part 1. (J.M.)
Key approaches and evolutions in Critical Political Economy of Media (1960-1995) Part 2. (J.M.)
Continuity and development of research on communication and cultural industries; toward the creative industries (1995-2010) (J.M.)
Renewed critique of media and culture industries (since 2010) (J.M.)
Web3 or blockchain-enabled platforms: glimpses of the future of the digital media? (J.M.)

Assessment Elements

Discussion/Participation.
Weekly Seminar Facilitation.
500-words paper proposal.
Research Paper Draft.
-
-
-

Interim Assessment

2024/2025 2nd module
0.2 * 500-words paper proposal. + 0.2 * Discussion/Participation. + 0.4 * Research Paper Draft. + 0.2 * Weekly Seminar Facilitation.
2024/2025 4th module
0.5 * - + 0.5 * -
2025/2026 2nd module
1 * -

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Fuchs, C. (2014). Social Media : A Critical Introduction. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Fuchs, C. (2019). Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism. Pluto Press.
Nicholas Garnham, & Christian Fuchs. (2014). Revisiting the Political Economy of Communication. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v12i1.553

Authors

PEREYASLOV ALEKSEY DENISOVICH

Course Syllabus