Political Economy Approach in Mass Media: Its Effects on Society

“Political economy approaches see the fact that culture is produced and consumed under capitalism as the fundamental issue in explaining the inequalities of power, prestige and profit.”

This statement by D. Hesmondhalgh captures the whole essence political economic approach in one sentence and is a great starting point to study the approach which gets more complex when looked at more deeply. Before making any further inquiries it is important to understand what significance this approach has and why are we studying it. It is important because from a liberal pluralist political perspective the cultural industries affect the democratic process and lifestyle. Now the political economy approach to this is a macro approach that looks at the big corporations who run an oligopoly in the industry. There are mainly six media conglomerates also referred to as the Big 6 namely National Amusements, Disney, Time Warner, Comcast, News Corp and Sony. These six companies own almost all of media and with an approximate combined wealth of $430 billion would together form the 26th richest country in the world. Thus it goes without saying what a huge impact they have on the world.

Political economy approach takes this study of cultural industries and focuses on aiming it towards social welfare. It is heavily critical of such large ownerships and corporations along with their behaviours which they often criticise are in interest of the wealthy owners and their powerful allies by only circulating the texts that profit them and burry the ones that would reflect on them negatively without considering the true value of the text or social welfare.

In simple econ terms this approach deals with the supply and critiques the biases in supply chain by the producers and distributors for their benefits even if it comes at the costs of the consumers.

Political econ is a very wide approach but here in this econ essay its scope is strictly limited to media. Peter Golding and Graham Mudrock (2005:P61-66) distinguish this approach to media from other economic approaches in four plain characteristics; it is holistic, historic, concerned with balance between capital enterprise and public interventions and addresses basic moral questions of justice and inequality.

I am not in full agreement with the characteristics listed by Peter Golding and Graham Mudrock simply because it would be very ignorant to consider this approach ‘holistic’.

1. As mentioned earlier political economy is a macro approach focusing on the production and circulations of media texts. Thus implying that the market of goods and the market of ideas are exactly the same. This not only ignores the distinction of the media industries and media texts from other industries and products and puts them all in the same bag but also ignores many cultural complexities and contradictions that come up while producing a media text. Because of its one dimensional approach to the market it misses out on the essential traits of the industry itself.

2. Among the other popular critiques for this approach would be its absolute ignorance to popular media, media texts and entertainment. As one may notice from this essay (among the other written articles on political economy) the approach usually seems to be talking about media in terms of facts and figures. In a way it centers only on news or factual media and ignores the various other aspects of media like popular media or entertainment. The political economic approach views media as very serious content, which it is but ignores the other more relaxed forms of media in terms of movies, music etc. which do form a huge part of the media industries.

3. The other popular critique of it would be its lack of interest in the media text. It stands true that the approach focuses only on production and distribution but not on what is being produced or distributed. It focuses on the channels of distributions and the biased structures of channels within them but never once addresses the issue of what is being produced.

The few limitations above are sufficient to say that the approach is not holistic at all. In fact it is very biased towards looking at the media industries from a distributor’s perspective and only raises the issues of distribution and the inequalities within them. However, these does not demerit the approach as it makes some very good arguments still.

The supporters of the political economy approach focus on the greater play of the market forces which would be leading to greater market freedom. The idea that a free market is a fair market. They are naturally critical of any interventions by the government or the public perhaps in the belief that such an intervention would create a bias that focuses on the interests of the party making the intervention (as they critique the big corporations) instead of focusing on the social welfare, which is what this approach seeks to achieve. The role of such interventions and corporations can easily appear to be larger than it really is from the surface of things however even in reality with the (relatively) diminished role of these two agencies it is very significant. Of course the consumers of the media texts are still making choices and taking the final decisions for themselves despite of the influence from other bodies or marketing and advertisement. What the approach really contests is that the even when the consumers are making a choice it is not a real one because their choices are limited with in wider structures these other forces come to create. Thus, only giving the consumer an illusion of ‘real choice’.

This approach comes to show that micro contexts are being constantly shaped by the economic dynamics and the play of power between them especially taking interest in the structures of communicative activities and its unequal distribution of material and symbolic resources. These lines bring focus on instrumentalism. Herman and Chomsky (manufacturing consent: political econ of mass media) call it a ‘propaganda model’, arguing that the powerful are in a privileged positions to be able to control what the general public consumes through media, what they see, listen or think about. In doing so they are able to manage public opinion to a certain extent. This is true to a certain extent and shows the power held by people in more privileged positions but they too work within limitations. For example: In a democratic country where the government has a tight grip on the media can use the media to make themselves look better than they really are. Thrashing their oppositions and all in all giving a very biased view of the political situation in the country. Having the different news channels constantly run the news about the contributions of the ruling party, to make the whole issue appear to be much bigger than its actual effect on the country. This could be done to be able to get re-elected for the next session and stay in power or any other agenda. Such practices do take place in real ‘democratic countries’ and is not completely hypothetical. The public mostly forms its opinion over the political parties from what they see or listen about them in the media and vote accordingly. Such practices threaten the democratic lifestyle and are more common than one would think. Discourses are rarely available to the public in raw state. They are usually restructured or re-contextualized to fit the particular agenda it aims to achieve.

The idea is essentially to make the media and it’s public broadcast a public good, equally available to everyone and designed to offer a diversity of experience and representations (instead of just multiplicity of it) and not to promote consumerism. It has to be in the interest of the people for social welfare and not the producers who are mostly aiming towards achieving their own agendas.