Critical Political Economy of Media

Master 2020/2021

Category 'Best Course for New Knowledge and Skills'

Type: Compulsory course (Critical Media Studies)

Area of studies: Media Communications

Delivered by: Institute of Media

Where: Faculty of Creative Industries

When: 1 year, 2-4 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Marco Briziarelli, Olga Dovbysh, Ilya Kiriya

Master’s programme: Критические медиаисследования

Language: English

ECTS credits: 6

Contact hours: 96

Full Syllabus Ask Question

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

Defines the place of critical political economy among other political economic approaches to media.
Makes the definition of the political economy of media
Able to separate critical reflects from uncritical reflections on media industries
Defines the role of media as symbolic power
Critically assess the way media affects other forms of power
Gives the main definition of power
Able to define main concepts of marxian dialectics and their relevance for media studies
Able to classify and define models of the media capital accumulation
Able to distinguish critical theory from uncritical
Define different approaches to critique from the Frankfurt School
Knows main concepts of critique from Horckheimer, Marcuse and Habermas
Able to use anti-commercial critique in studying media
Defines main risks of the pure commercialization
Characterizes media as public good
Understanding of different logics and aims of the concentration process
Able to analyze the concentration in cross-sectoral fields (such as telecommunications, IT, software etc.) and their power relations
Defines the notion of cultural imperialism
Identify main proponents of the positivistic vision of the media globalism (De Sola Pool, Lerner)
Classify different directions in cultural domination theories
Identify main structural peculiarity of value in cultural industries
Identify and classify main models of functionning
Distinguish between theory of cultural industries and theory of creative industries
To be able to critically de-construct the rhetoric on media technology
To be able to assess the role played by communication and media practices in producing and reproducing capitalist hegemony.

Course Contents

Critical political economy of media among other theories
Critical political economy of media (CPEM) and political economy of media. Core approaches to political economy of media and the place of CPEM among them.
Media and power assymmetries
How media are related to power. What does it mean media power? Critical political economy approach to the power of media.
Basics of the Marxist dialectics for media studies
Notion of dialectics in marxist vision. Capital accumulation, exploitation and surplus value notions
Critical theory and Frankfurt School as early form of critical political economy
Notion of critic. Critical theory. Marcuse and Adorno and their critic of capitalist dialectics. Instrumental and critical reason in Habermas theory.
Critical political Economy of media and critic of commodification
Media as private and public good. Notion of commodity. Media as commodity. Audience commodity. Critique of commercial media by Robert McChesney
Critical political economy of media capital concentration
Concentration critique in the debate of critical political economy. Types of the concentration. History of the concentration. Concentration of media and shrinking of pluralism.
Critical political economy and world media domination critique
Notion of cultural imperialism. Herbert Schiller and cultural domination. New Media and Information Order debate and UNESCO. South/North and East/West axis
Theory of cultural industries
Main origins of theory. Main economic peculiarity of cultural products. Exchange value and consumer value for media. Basic models of cultural industries and their evolution. Creative industries and their critique by critical PEM
Close Encounters: The Media and Communication as/and Capitalist Forms
This course critically examines some key nodal points where media and communication practices intertwine with and are subsumed under capitalist forms such as commodities, labor and technology. We will thus be charting the tortuous territory that links socially shared meanings and value. In fact, despite an alleged recent ‘linguistic and communication’ turn, especially in the context of a Marxist-oriented political economy, such intersections have been frequently considered as theoretically problematic: while communication and media studies have been concerned with tendencies towards economic reductionism displayed by Marxist scholarship, recent Marxist sociology has feared the displacement of the primacy of the social question by ‘secondary’ level communication preoccupations, allegedly produced by a misguided postmodern sensibility. However, despite its internal tensions, by examining different modalities of articulating media/communication practices and capitalist forms, this course will offer a sample of the tremendous potential of using a media/communication-oriented political economy as a privileged and holistic perspective in order to provide a radical critique of contemporary capitalism.

Assessment Elements

Debates between political economy of media and cultural studies
Reflection 1
Collective discussion on power and counter power
Debates on "Blindspot" in western marxism and audience commodity
Reflection 2
Reflection 3
Reflection 4
Reflection 5
Reflection 6
Collective discussion on critical theory
collective discussion on ideologies in global media production
Collective mapping of cultural industries
Essay 1
Essay 2
Attendance

Interim Assessment

Interim assessment (2 module)
0.2 * Attendance + 0.4 * Essay 1 + 0.2 * Reflection 1 + 0.2 * Reflection 2
Interim assessment (4 module)
0.1 * collective discussion on ideologies in global media production + 0.05 * Collective mapping of cultural industries + 0.05 * Debates on "Blindspot" in western marxism and audience commodity + 0.4 * Essay 2 + 0.1 * Reflection 3 + 0.1 * Reflection 4 + 0.1 * Reflection 5 + 0.1 * Reflection 6

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Bellavoine, C., Bouquillion, P., & Wiart, L. (2018). Digital Platforms and Performing Arts: Communication of Theatrical Institutions, Audience Development, and Platform Strategies of Industrial Players.
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. (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
Hesmondhalgh, D., Kiely, R., & Marfleet, P. (1998). chapter 7: Globalisation and cultural imperialism: a case study of the music industry. In Globalisation & the Third World (pp. 163–183). Taylor & Francis Ltd / Books. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=sih&AN=17444536
Ithiel de Sola POOL. (1983). Technologies of Freedom. Harvard University Press.
Johan Galtung. (1990). Cultural Violence. Journal of Peace Research, 3, 291.
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
Rickman, H. P. (1976). The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (Book). British Journal of Sociology, 27(4), 509–510. https://doi.org/10.2307/590190
Rosalind Gill, & Andy Pratt. (n.d.). 2008 “In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work” Theory, Culture.
Schiller, H. I. (1993). Transnational media: Creating consumers worldwide. Journal of International Affairs, 47(1), 47. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=f5h&AN=9402082494
Sillito, J. R. (1989). A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. Library Journal, 114(8), 90.

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
Garnham, N. (1983). Public Service versus the Market. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/24.1.6
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
Patrice Flichy. (2007). Understanding Technological Innovation. Edward Elgar Publishing. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsrep&AN=edsrep.b.elg.eebook.12803
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
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

Course Syllabus