About the Editors viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Series Editor’s Preface xvi

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction: The Political Economy of Communications: Core Concerns and Issues 1
Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock, and Helena Sousa

Part I Legacies and Debates 11

1 Political Economies as Moral Economies: Commodities, Gifts, and Public Goods 13
Graham Murdock

2 The Political Economy of Communication Revisited 41
Nicholas Garnham

3 Markets in Theory and Markets in Television 62
Eileen R. Meehan and Paul J. Torre

4 Theorizing the Cultural Industries: Persistent Specificities and Reconsiderations 83
Bernard Miège (translation by Chloé Salles)

5 Communication Economy Paths: A Latin American Approach 109
Martín Becerra and Guillermo Mastrini

Part II Modalities of Power: Ownership, Advertising, Government 127

6 The Media Amid Enterprises, the Public, and the State: New Challenges for Research 129
Giuseppe Richeri

7 Media Ownership, Concentration, and Control: The Evolution of Debate 140
John D. H. Downing

8 Maximizing Value: Economic and Cultural Synergies 169
Nathan Vaughan

9 Economy, Ideology, and Advertising 187
Roque Faraone

10 Branding and Culture 206
John Sinclair

11 Liberal Fictions: The Public–Private Dichotomy in Media Policy 226
Andrew Calabrese and Colleen Mihal

12 The Militarization of US Communications 264
Dan Schiller

13 Journalism Regulation: State Power and Professional Autonomy 283
Helena Sousa and Joaquim Fidalgo

Part III Conditions of Creativity: Industries, Production, Labor 305

14 The Death of Hollywood: Exaggeration or Reality? 307
Janet Wasko

15 The Political Economy of the Recorded Music Industry: Redefinitions and New Trajectories in the Digital Age 331
André Sirois and Janet Wasko

16 The Political Economy of Labor 358
Vincent Mosco

17 Toward a Political Economy of Labor in the Media Industries 381
David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker

Part IV Dynamics of Consumption: Choice, Mobilization, Control 401

18 From the “Work of Consumption” to the “Work of Prosumers”: New Scenarios, Problems, and Risks 403
Giovanni Cesareo

19 The Political Economy of Audiences 415
Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers

20 The Political Economy of Personal Information 436
Oscar H. Gandy, Jr.

21 The Political Economy of Political Ignorance 458
Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock

Part V Emerging Issues and Directions 483

22 Media and Communication Studies Going Global 485
Jan Ekecrantz

23 New International Debates on Culture, Information, and Communication 501
Armand Mattelart (translation by Liz Libbrecht)

24 Global Capitalism, Temporality, and the Political Economy of Communication 521
Wayne Hope

25 Global Media Capital and Local Media Policy 541
Michael Curtin

26 The Challenge of China: Contribution to a Transcultural Political Economy of Communication for the Twenty-First Century 558
Yuezhi Zhao

Name Index 583

Subject Index 596

Over the last decade, political economy has grown rapidly as a specialist area of research and teaching within communications and media studies and is now established as a core element in university programs around the world. The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications offers students and scholars a comprehensive, authoritative, up-to-date, and accessible overview of key areas and debates in the field.

This contemporary guide to political economics of communication combines authoritative overviews of core ideas with new case study materials and the best of contemporary theorization and research.  Including newly commissioned essays by the best-known scholars in the field, this handbook explores and interrogates different approaches and problematics across different political and cultural regions, and offers a theoretical map of the field, both historically and conceptually.

"Political economy has roared back into town. Terms like 'net neutrality,' 'creative labor,' 'the precariat,' and 'global capital' are in every critic's vocabulary—or should be. This Handbook's editors, all leading figures, have assembled an equally distinguished group of authors to lead the charge."
—Toby Miller, author of Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention

"This is an excellent book that moves from heritage sites to new destinations, and from the old standards to innovative research."
—Professor James Curran, Director, Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre, University of London

"The power of the communications media to shape people's cultural, political and social lives is immense. We should never lose sight of the bases to their political and economic potency, and the political economy of communications is a crucial intellectual tradition in both analysing the media, and in giving sound critical foundations to challenge and intervention. In this important collection the editors have brought together an authoritative and diverse collection of original essays that reaffirm the importance of this tradition and make an irreplaceable contribution to it."
—Peter Golding, Northumbria University

"This is not only a welcome package of scholarship but also a timely reminder of the vitality of critical political economy, serving to keep the research tradition straight and wide under pressures of marketization and globalization."
—Kaarle Nordenstreng, Tampere University