|
Printable
PDF
Article
No. 2
The
Political Economy of Communication: Power and Resistance,
An Interview with Vincent Mosco
Begoña Ballesteros, Luis
Luján, and Joan Pedro
Universidad
Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
Keywords
Political economy, commodification, structuration, agency, new
technologies, capitalism.
Abstract
In
this interview professor Vincent Mosco discusses major structural features
of the social system, which constrain the possibilities of using
technology, media and communication in a genuinely democratic way. At the
same time, he also emphasizes the importance of dialectics in social
processes and analyzes the agency and resistance of different social actors
-such as communication workers- in the processes of media production and
democratic struggle. He then refers to the challenges that new
communication technologies pose to capitalism. Finally, he reflects on the
theory and the state of the field of political economy of communication.
Introduction
Canadian
professor Vincent Mosco (1948) is one of the most notable figures in
critical communication research, especially in the field of the political
economy of communication. His academic work has focused on the economic,
political, technological and cultural implications of the transformations
that the communication sector has experienced since the end of the 20th
century.
Some
of his best known books are Broadcasting in the United States:
Innovative challenge and organization control (1979), which was based
on his doctoral thesis in sociology at Harvard University; The Political
Economy of Information (1988), edited with Janet Wasko; and Continental
Order?: Integrating North America for Cybercapitalism (2001), edited
with Dan Schiller. In 2005, Mosco received the Olson Book Award for
his book The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power and Cyberspace (2004) in
which he demystified the idea of technological development as a universal
panacea. The previous year, his research on communication, technology, and
society was recognized with the Dallas Smythe Award.
Under
his Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society at Queen’s
University, Kingston, Mosco’s recent research has dealt with the way in
which communication and information workers are responding to the current
context of neoliberalism, information society, and technological change. As
a result of this research he has co-edited with Catherine McKercher Knowledge
Workers in the Information Society (2007) and written with Professor
McKercher The Laboring of Communication: Will Knowledge Workers of the
World Unite (2008).
Unquestionably,
his most influential work is The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking
and Renewal, published in 1996 and revised and updated in 2009. Almost
15 years after its original publication, this book is considered a classic
by communication scholars and an indispensable tool for those who wish to
understand communication from a critical perspective.
In
this interview, Professor Mosco summarizes some of the main concepts, ideas
and processes that he has studied throughout the years. He shares his
insights on the tradition of the political economy of communication and
some of its main entry points, discusses technological and social change,
and reflects on communication and media at the current crossroads. Indeed,
the capitalist system is facing serious contradictions today and new
opportunities for civil society and democratic development have emerged.
Mosco talks about these changes focusing on the dialectical relationship
between structure and agency and between power and resistance, paying
special attention to the new media.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: A revised and updated edition of your 1996 landmark book
The Political Economy of Communication was published in 2009. The
core concepts you develop in the book are commodification, spatialization,
and structuration. How do these concepts still help understand the most
important features and relations of the communication phenomena today?
Mosco: It seems to me that these
concepts are more important than ever. First, commodification refers
to taking goods or services valued for their use and turning them into
commodities that are valued for what they can bring in exchange.
Commodification is my entry point to understand communication and it seems
to me that it is more central today to understanding mass media, new media
and information technology than ever before. I’ve been studying for years
the process whereby advances in technology make it possible to measure and
monitor, and to package and repackage communication and information
products. The new media we have today make it easier to commodify stories,
news and other forms of information and entertainment, and to distribute
them widely. We also have more and more transnational businesses that are
using new technologies as inputs to produce more commercial products.
Therefore, in essence, commodification is central because it is more and
more apparent that the mass media are commercial products.
When
I was writing the first edition to the book it seemed to me that
commodification does not completely explain social relations, and should
not be the only tool in the political economy of communication (PEC). I
made this point on philosophical grounds, whose underlying view is that we
should not reduce all phenomena to one essential cause. That is why I
developed additional entry points including, first, spatialization,
which looks at the ways in which we overcome spatial constraints with
communication and information. I use spatialization, a term that has been
used by geographers for many years, as opposed to the more popular term
globalization. I do that, in part, because I consider globalization more of
a euphemism, which is used to support the extension of business and other
institutions worldwide. Spatialization is a more objective term, which
refers to the ways in which communication and information technologies are
being used to extend communication and media across spatial boundaries.
Finally,
I use the term structuration derived, in part, from a line in Marx’s
18th Brumaire, which, to paraphrase, is that people make history
but not under conditions of their own making. This means that agency is
constrained by structures and structures are built with agency. Structuration
thereby studies the process by which agency and structure interact and
create different kinds of social relations, including those based on class,
gender, race and other social relational formations.
These
are the three major entry points. Permit me to say one other thing about
them. I think it is important to emphasize that these three entry points
work in a dialectical fashion, i.e., commodification is not just the
process of creating exchange values; it is also one that is opposed by
those who defend use value as a central force in social life. Similarly,
spatialization does not simply mean the extension of commercial
institutions, State and other structures on a global basis; it is also
opposed dialectically by those who defend, for example, local structures or
public spaces against this commercial spatialization. Finally,
structuration exists in a continuous process of struggle, whether that is
class struggle to fight against the hegemony of the dominant class,
struggles over gender, struggles over race, and other social struggles to
protect, for example, as in our field, the mass media as an institution to
advance social life as opposed to simply having commercial purposes.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: We think it is really valuable that you put emphasis on
agency, but understanding agency in the context of the structures that
limit and constrain the possibilities of human action. We are thinking
about your recent work with Catherine McKercher (2007, 2008), which deals
with knowledge and communication workers in the so-called information
society. Your empirical research documents that workers around the world
are responding critically to the new challenges that arise from
technological change, neo-liberalism, and the new global capitalist
informational economy. We wondered if these struggles are representative of
what is happening in mainstream trends, or if they are specific cases that
may reflect a rather optimistic view of worker’s resistance.
Mosco: I think that is a very good
question. It is important to emphasize that labor is a central component of
the commodification process. Communication scholars have done a very good
job of describing how contents of the media and audiences are commodified,
but they haven’t spent much time on the commodification of labor, that is
the way workers are involved in producing and distributing the media. We
chose to concentrate on labor, in part, to make communication scholars more
aware of the importance of labor in the process of making media, but also
to inform labor studies scholars that they need to pay attention to
communication and cultural laborers, something that they have not done. You
are absolutely correct. The point of emphasis in our book is to focus on
the agency of workers. We do that because much of what research has been
done on labor, media and technology is about how new technology and the
corporations that use it exploit labor and degrade the labor process. But
if you look at this dialectically we recognize that labor is an active
participant in the process of creating value and some of that participation
is resistance in a variety of ways; individual ways in which people try to
control and make some sense of their work and more collective ones when
workers get together in labor unions and other forms of workers
organizations.
We
noticed in our research –first in the United States, then in Europe and
now, in the latest stage of our research project, globally- that there is
an upsurge in the resistance of workers worldwide in the cultural,
communications, telecommunications and I.T. sectors. So our job is to begin
the process –along with other scholars who work on this- of describing this
resistance, this active social agency of workers. We see this in
traditional, such as the ways trade unions, like the Communication Workers
of America, are organizing in the new media sectors. We see this happening
in Canada and Europe too. We have also observed, however, new forms of
workers organizations that have been especially important in the I.T.
sector. For example, workers organizing at Microsoft, where the workers
association WashTech has had an impact on the labor process of what is one
of the largest I.T. firms in the world. We also see this outside of the
core of developed societies. I have done research in India and China and
find remarkable and very courageous evidence of worker agency and
resistance. You are correct to point out that what we are describing are mere
examples. How pervasive are they? I think this remains to be seen, but it
seems to us, preliminarily, that it is pervasive enough to bring it to the
attention of communication scholars who need to focus on labor organizing
and labor resistance, both in traditional and in new ways.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: Coming back to the core concepts of The Political
Economy of Communication, could you comment on the origins of the
processes of commodification, spatialization and structuration? What
historical periods and structural factors fostered their development?
Mosco: I think that these concepts are
both universal and specific. I think it is reasonable to see them in both
senses, and even necessary, certainly, in the study of the media.
Commodification, or the development of exchange value and of markets, has
been a process that has been a part of societies for a long time, even
predating capitalism. Similarly the process of spatial expansion has been
with us for a long time. Certainly, there has been, if I return to
structuration, patriarchy for a much longer period of time than we have
experienced capitalism. In one sense, these are general, universal concepts
that are more or less applicable to different historical periods. I choose
to give them emphasis by starting with commodification and moving on to the
other two in this period because they are historically relevant in very
specific terms to a capitalist world-system. Commodification emerges as a
leading entry point in the 17th and 18th centuries in
Europe as capitalism, starting with commercial agriculture and then
commercial industries, emerges as a major organizing social force. I focus
on these terms in the way I do today because they are historically, in my
view, the most relevant to understand contemporary social relations.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: In the context of a capitalist economy, what social
actors are more responsible for the commodification of the communication
flows? Is it the State, since it has liberalized the markets? Is it the media,
for adopting the principles of commodification? Is it a certain logic
within the system?
Mosco: I think, first and foremost, it
is capitalists who have advanced capitalism. But if we look at this more
specifically, I think we need to focus on three distinct forces that
promote commodification. The first are the specific media producers, that
is the corporations that produce and distribute mass media, develop new
technologies like social networking sites for commercial purposes, i.e., to
build markets, make profit and advance the production of surplus value.
Secondly,
we have the State, which contributes broadly to mobilizing institutions,
laws and public support for this process. It provides the institutional
framework for media producers.
The
third force is the general collection of capitalists, who, for example, use
the mass media to advance their own messages, specifically through
advertising, but also by working with media producers to ensure, broadly,
that information and entertainment promote commodification. I’ve said
“broadly”, because this does not mean supporting capitalism in every
instance. So while it is important to focus on Rupert Murdock’s News
Corporation or on Disney and its ABC network, as central participants, it
is capitalists in general, specifically through their advertising, and the
State, through law and regulation, that also advance the process of
commodification.
In
essence, we are talking about a triangle at the top of which are the media
producers themselves and at each corner we find, on the one hand, the
State, and on the other side, capitalists in general.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: In this context that you are describing, what role do
you think the public media and the State may play in the future? Could the
State challenge the capitalist and media elite?
Mosco: Again, it is important to return
to the concepts of the dialectic and of agency. All social processes
contain contradictions, contestation and resistance. The State itself is
what we call a contested terrain, i.e., a space of struggle. In general
terms, the State is organized to advance the interests of capital, for
example, by managing tensions and conflicts in private and commercial media
markets through law and regulation and also by keeping down public and
other forms of media that might challenge commercial interests. At the same
time, however, the State needs the broad support of its public, of society,
and that includes organizations that work to advance public media and
oppose commercialization. It has to respond to pressure to build more
public media by admitting some of it into the system. So most developed
societies have a public television channel and a public radio; they have
public means of communication, which is part of resistance. So we have a
process by which the State promotes capital, but then tries, at the same
time, to incorporate public media because it is pressured to do so and
because by incorporating, it can clean it up and make it less controversial.
In the course of doing that, public media have a very important role to
play in revealing the limitations of capitalism and uncovering government
problems. We have a long tradition of resisting through public media and we
also have new forms of public media developing at the community level.
I
think that there are great opportunities for communication scholars to
describe and participate to advance a more public and democratic media. In
North America there is an organization that I and some colleagues helped to
form in 1979, The Union for Democratic Communication, which brings together
critical scholars and alternative media practitioners and, internationally,
the I.A.M.C.R. (International Association for Media and Communication
Research), which serves as a forum for critical scholars worldwide. So,
yes, there is control by capital and the State, but resistance takes place.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: With regards to the interaction between the State, the
media and other social actors of the capitalist system, do you think that
there is a relation between the commodification of communication and
cultural flows oriented towards consumption and entertainment, instead of
being oriented towards education and liberation, and a certain decline of class
consciousness and the weakness of workers as an engine of social change?
Mosco: It is very difficult to draw
conclusions on such a general concept of global consciousness. However, I
think it is important in our responsibility as academics to draw conclusions
based on our research that are helpful in understanding such important
issues. First of all, it is vital to see that what television, new media
and the Internet provide is a form of education; in essence, a form of
educating people to be good consumers, to prepare them to become obedient
workers, to advance a system that would singularly turn everything into a
marketable commodity, to turn every space into a private, commercial,
restricted space. It is absolutely accurate to conclude that there has been
a massive and global system of education to create the global consumer. And
this does make it more challenging for those of us who think that there is
more to social life than simply consumption and advancing profit.
With
that said, I think that there are many other individuals and organizations
around the world that would support the view that there is more to life
than commercialism and capitalism. We see this in all sorts of movements to
resist and oppose the forces of capitalism. Sometimes this has difficulty
in being expressed because people feel it individually and do not have
outlets, institutions, organizations that they can turn to.
I
would say that on a general level, on the one hand, yes, capitalist culture
has won major victories worldwide in reducing a good deal of culture to the
singularity of capitalism. At the same time, it is important to recognize
that capitalism contains significant contradictions that have contributed
to its own failures. On a general level we have had, certainly during the
last year and a half, a massive global financial crisis in capitalism that
has had a powerful effect on both old and new media. The economic crisis
that we face worldwide has had that impact, and it is only the latest in a
series of the so-called bubbles that have disrupted capitalism
significantly. It is important to recognize that media, especially new
media, play an important role because capitalism, which, in essence,
reached a limit in its ability to generate surplus value production through
agriculture and through industrial capacity, has turned to new media and
mass media to generate profit. But this itself has fed the bubble, the
crisis within capitalism. Consider the widespread view that capitalism can
accomplish everything with new media -that it can end history, overcome
geography, and transform politics. It is important for us not just to
retain hope, but to analytically understand that these are not just
presumed capacities of capitalism; they are also myths that capitalism uses
to build support for its practices. Moreover, when bankers, insurance
companies, and other informational capitalists act on these myths, they
result in contradictions that disrupt capitalism. Capitalism is conflicted
internally and we are now experiencing the consequences through massive
unemployment, declining standards of living, and the failure of States to
resolve the crisis without drastic measures.
At
the same time, most contradictions and other forces are creating resistance
at a level of consciousness. I think a part of that comes down to the fact
that people’s political and belief system resist what reducing everything
to a singularity, that is, to one way of understanding and doing things.
They seek diversity, they seek complexity and they raise questions when
capitalists try to turn everything into a unitary mode of production or
consciousness. They look for alternatives. While it may be the case that
capitalist culture is very powerful worldwide, my research and my travels
around the world, including in places where one would not expect it, for
example in China and Singapore, where one finds evidence of
authoritarianism, one also finds an opening up, a willingness and a desire
to create a more democratic culture and way of life.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: Focusing on capitalism’s contradictions as the ones you
mention, the autonomist theory holds that technology, such as the Internet,
challenges the capitalist property and market regimes under which
communication flows operate. How do you view this situation?
Mosco: Professor McKercher and I
acknowledge, in our research (especially in our book The Laboring
of Communication), the important contribution of the autonomists. We
conclude that the autonomist view –of Negri and Hardt, Terranova, and
Dyer-Witheford, have advanced understanding, especially of the new media,
by demonstrating that we need to think about the challenges and the
complexities that new media pose to capitalism. Capitalism is always
challenged by new media, whether the new media was radio in the early 20th
century, television or now the Internet. We recognize that autonomists make
a very interesting contribution by demonstrating that technology poses
challenges to capitalism. Where we have more difficulty is in accepting the
view that some, but not all autonomists, conclude that new technology,
especially the media, will necessarily make it impossible for capitalism to
solve the value problem posed by new media, that is, to produce
communication and cultural commodities that they can use to realize profit.
What we are seeing today, I think, acknowledges the contribution of
autonomists to show that many of the big media companies, however
concentrated, transnational and powerful as never before, are nevertheless
having problems figuring out how they are going to make money from the new
media.
Along
these lines, new technologies make it easier to democratize communication
and information. This is certainly a new challenge for capitalism.
But a challenge does not mean that capitalists will fail to find, as they
already are, new modes of making money. What this points to is the absolute
necessity for communication scholars and media activists to study the
history of media. The same challenges posed by the Internet today were
posed to capitalism nearly a century ago, for example, when radio came
along in the 1920s. It took two decades for capitalists to figure out the
best way to make money from radio. In fact, when radio arrived most thought
that they would only be able to profit by selling radio receivers. It took
AT&T and RCA many years to realize that they could actually sell
entertainment and thereby deliver audiences to advertisers for a price. We
can observe the same problem today with new media. So, while I would agree
with the autonomists that new media pose challenges to capitalism (like all
systems, it is indeed imperfect); my conclusion is that without resistance
and critical thinking, capitalists ultimately solve for themselves the
problem of creating and sustaining surplus value in new media.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: The Internet, which is probably the main technological
tool in the information society, is a paradigmatic example of this
double-edged condition of information technologies. On the one hand it is
being used for corporate and political control. On the other hand, it
enables the creation and development of non-corporate media and of
progressive and radical social organization. Can these two realities
coexist or is one of them going to win the battle over the other?
Mosco: Again, I come back to the
dialectic. It is always the case that media are contested, so if I may
return to radio, for many years, while it was used for commercial purposes
-once businesses figured out how to make money with it-, labor unions that
owned radio stations used those stations, as historians are documenting, to
advance a more democratic public message. It is the same with the Internet.
The important thing to understand -especially for those who have not looked
at the history- is that this is not new. The media have always been
contested. My sense is that this trend is likely to continue into the
future. The point isn’t so much whether one of them will win out because I
don’t think one force ever wins to dominate an entire medium; but rather
what would be the balance? Will democracy become a more significant force
in the media? Will it be able to limit the expansion of commercialization
and commodification?
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: One of the main controversies around the Internet is the
issue of Net Neutrality. Could you comment on it?
Mosco: This concept means, essentially,
that everyone has equal access to new media because no single provider is
permitted to provide advantages to those who would use the Internet simply
because they have more money. It’s like saying “we are able to gain easier
access to the highway and to drive faster because we pay more money to
those who build and operate the highway; conversely, if you don’t have
money, it will take longer to get on the highway and you will be relegated
to a very slow, narrow lane”. Net neutrality is an effort to fight this, by
making it a principle that everyone has equal access to information
highways.
The
term Net Neutrality is new, but the idea is an old one. From the early days
of the telegraph and the telephone, people struggled to gain equal access
to the means of communication. I think this is an issue that is worth
fighting for and many organizations are doing so and are wining important
victories, most recently in the United States under Obama’s Federal
Communications Commission.
But
Net Neutrality is not the only key to a more democratic new media. There
has been some controversy in the U.S. because one of the largest labor
unions representing communication workers has not demonstrated strong
support for Net Neutrality. The union believes that if companies are not
allowed to build networks in such a way that they make more money from some
providers, it will make it more difficult for these companies to invest in
new media. The union fears the loss of jobs and the overall decline in
network services. This is a complex issue. While I think it’s important to
support Net Neutrality, we want to be sure that we also create the jobs
that continue to build the network, so that the highway for everyone is as
large and as fast as it can possibly be. We don’t want Net Neutrality
to restrict the size of the highway. This is a particular problem,
ironically enough, in a rich country like the United States, which has rates
of access to media and bandwidth speeds that are lower than one might
expect by comparison to other countries in the developed world. In my view
we have to do two things: We have to guarantee equality, which is Net
Neutrality, and we have to invest in the construction of national and
global networks which guarantee that everyone has access to the best
possible networks. As a political economist I recognize that this will not
result from economic policy alone; it is also a political question that
involves critical thinking and
activism.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: The following questions have to do with the tradition of
the political economy of communication (PEC). In spite of producing an
in-depth analysis of communication and other social phenomena, McChesney
(2000) wrote that PEC had a marginal presence in US universities at the
turn of the new century. Has this situation changed? Is it the same all
around the globe?
Mosco: I think it is the case that PEC
has a limited presence in American Universities. That is, partly, because
American communication programs were, until recently, training programs
that were set up to produce people to work in the media industry. Mainly,
they taught people practical skills and a few research techniques to measure
audiences and do the kind of things necessary, for example, to get into
radio, television, and new media marketing. Now, research in communication
programs in the U.S. has grown and I think it is important to emphasize
that political economy (PE) has grown with it. Whereas several years ago
there were only a handful of political economists in academic departments
around the U.S., now, I would say that most departments have at least one
person who is broadly identified with PE and some programs have several. I
don’t think that McChesney would disagree with this point. His own program
at the University of Illinois has Dan Schiller and others who would see
themselves as working broadly in the area of PE… So, in my view, PE has
grown and, most importantly, as a field of research has become global,
i.e., we now see in universities across Europe, Latin America, and more
recently in Asia and Africa, the growth of a globalized PEC. In fact, I am
quite optimistic. It is important to acknowledge that there are people working
in PE who do not call themselves political economists, and there are
departments that don’t call what they teach PEC, but they may offer a
course on critical media studies, on the media industry or on public media
that has important components of PE. Over the 35 years or so that I’ve
worked in the field of PE, I have observed important growth. Much work
needs to be done, but I am pleased to see the expansion of the field.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro: In your work, you rescue analytical categories from
classical political economy in which one can observe the influence of
dialectical materialism epistemology. However, your will to “emphasize the
diversity” of the discipline, leads you to consider both Marxist thought
and other different perspectives from authors like Malthus or Schumpeter.
For some scholars, this union means joining together two perspectives
(Marxist analysis and economic orthodoxy) which are contradictory in
nature. What would you answer to this?
Mosco: I think we need to make an important
distinction here. My goal was to advance and rethink PE as a broad field
and identify key characteristics of PE from, for example, the time of Adam
Smith in the 18th century through Marx in the 19th
and to contemporary PE. They all share certain characteristics: A
commitment to history, to the study of the social totality, to moral
philosophy, i.e., to values, and to bringing about social change, to social
intervention, or social praxis as I call it. Whether it was Adam Smith,
trying to understand capitalism critically, or Karl Marx, who set out to
comprehend what he felt was the transition to a socialist or communist
society, they share characteristics. The primary distinction to be made is
between PE and mainstream or neoclassical economics, which was established
in the late 19th century by people who rejected the commitment
to history, the social totality, values, and social intervention. So I do
not maintain that Marx and neoclassical economists sleep together- because
they would make very strange bedmates indeed! Rather, the point is to
understand the shared characteristics of a PE understanding. The central
point is to distinguish PE, broadly, from neoclassical economics, which
rejected the central values of PE and I think made a serious error in doing
so. Today, people everywhere suffer the consequences, especially in times
of economic crisis like this one, of the limited and deeply ideological
understanding that mainstream economics provides.
Ballesteros,
Luján & Pedro:
In the Opening Conference of the 7th ULEPICC International
congress in Madrid, Spain, you argued that there has been a shift in the
political economy of communication research towards new standpoints and
emphases. Could you expand on this idea?
Mosco: Yes. I think, first of all, it is
important to recognize that there is great continuity within PE, i.e., we
are still interested in focusing on commodification as the central entry
point to study big media corporations, their power, and the process of
neo-liberalism, and deregulation which links the State to capitalist media.
These problems and our analysis of them are still central to what we do. It
was also my intention to address new standpoints. For it to grow and
maintain its relevance to understand and change the world, every approach
needs to evolve and develop in new ways. My interest was to look at how PEC
was taking on new characteristics, without necessarily rejecting the old
ones and this includes certainly, as I mentioned earlier, the globalization
of PEC. PEC was once largely a North American phenomenon and then expanded
as European universities developed communication programs. It is now
global: There are key scholars in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, as I
document in the new edition, who are developing a strong PE perspective and
who are giving it a strong international character. This has an impact on
the kind of research that is carried out. Whereas in the past research had
an important focus on the problems of the national, core, capitalist media
in the US or Canada, today the focus is on global questions, i.e., the ways
in which transnational businesses dominate media, but also how resistance
is increasingly global.
In
addition, I’ll briefly refer to the other important characteristics. It is
certainly the case that the history of media, which I emphasized as an
important force in understanding today’s media, has taken on a new
dimension. Specifically, people doing research on media history, like my
colleagues Robert McChesney, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Patricia Mazepa, Dan
Schiller and a number of others, are looking at the ways in which the
history of media needs to be told from below, not just from above, as a
history of resistance and struggle.
We’ve
also seen the development of new standpoints of resistance within PE.
Feminism has become a very important force within PEC. There are a number
of books and articles that seek to address the common ground between
feminism and PE. I think labor has become a new standpoint, certainly one
that professor McKercher and I have attempted to advance and so have a
number of other scholars. I would also argue that PE is providing new
perspectives on new media. We referred to the autonomists whose work is
increasingly incorporated within PE as an important dimension of
understanding the complexity of new technology, i.e., new technology does
do not just advance the continuity of capitalism, but also creates
disjunctions, challenges, and complexities for capitalism. There has been a
new emphasis within new media and the PE of surveillance, and a political
dimension in understanding how new media do not just generate surplus value
and profit; they generate new forms of social control.
I
think it is important to emphasize that there are new organizations that
are working to expand a critical analysis and intervention to bring about a
more democratic media. For example, your organization ULEPICC, which
studies political economy in Latin America and Spain, is a critical new
development. Other recent developments have to do with advancing a
democratic information society about which the organization Free Press in
the United States has made major public policy interventions. These and
other organizations fuel a rejuvenation of PE’s longstanding interest in
praxis or social action.
References
McChesney, R.W. (2000). The
political economy of communication and the future of the field. Media,
Culture and Society, Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New
Delhi), vol. 2: 109-116.
McKercher, C. & Mosco, V. (eds.)
(2007). Knowledge workers in the information society. Lanham:
Lexington Books.
McKercher, C. & Mosco, V. (2008). The
Laboring of communication. Will knowledge workers of the word unite?
Lanham: Lexington Books.
Mosco, V. (1978). Broadcasting in the
United States: Innovative challenge and organization control. Norwood,
NJ: Ablez Pub.
Mosco, V. (1996). The political
economy of communication: Rethinking and renewal. London: Sage.
Mosco, V. (2004). The digital Sublime:
Myth, power, and cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mosco, V. (2009). The political
economy of communication. Second revised edition. London: Sage.
Mosco, V. & Schiller, D. (eds.)
(2001). Continental order?: Integrating North America for
Cybercapitalism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mosco, V. & Wasko, J. (eds.) (1988). The
political economy of information. Madison: The University
About the Authors
Begoña
Ballesteros is a
doctoral candidate in the Communication and Social Change and Development
Program at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. She holds both
bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the same university, the first in
journalism and the latter in social communication with a specialty in
communication theory and research. from the same university, and a
Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Contact
information:
begoballesteros@ccinf.ucm.es
Department
of Sociology IV, Faculty of Journalism, Universidad Complutense de Madrid,
Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain. +34 91 3942144.
Luis
Luján is a
doctoral candidate in the program of Theoretical, Structural and
Ethical Approaches in Mass Communication at the Universidad Complutense de
Madrid, Spain, from which he also learned a bachelor’s degree in
journalism. Contact information: lelujan@ccinf.ucm.es
Department
of Journalism III, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria,
28040, Madrid, Spain, +34 91 3942144.
Joan
Pedro is a
doctoral candidate at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, where he
also earned a master’s degree in communication theory and research He
holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising and public relations from the
Universidad de Alicante, Spain. His work has appeared in the International
Journal of Radical Mass Media Criticism. Contact information: joan.pedro@pdi.ucm.es
Department
of Sociology IV, Faculty of Information Sciences, Universidad Complutense
de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain. +34 91 3942144.
|
