POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY III:Criticism, Power of Advertising

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Theories of Communication MCM 511

LESSON 32

POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY III

Graham in 1990 argues that it is only by understanding the organization of the industry that we can

comprehend why certain media products are made and Distributed as well as their content and form.

Graham says that the process of production, the deployment of media worker, the division of labour,

the means of distribution need to be considered in order to make a decision about `who can say what

to whom'.

Graham identifies a number of features of the media industries that are determined by their specific

means of production and distribution e.g. he points out the unique nature of the product

manufactured by the media industries, which has shaped the methods used to find markets. They are

unlike most other products in that they need to have novelty value a newspaper has to be new

every day, while music recordings have to have different sounds; and they are not destroyed in the

process of consumption-reading a book or watching a film does not make it unavailable to other

people.

Media products are then, costly to produce with a high degree of initial investment, but cheap to

reproduce, which encourages the industries to seek to maximize their audiences as the preferred

profit maximization strategy. He argues that this is the reason for the concentration,

internationalization and diversification of ownership.

Concentration allows owners relative freedom in their attempts to maximize audience.

Internationalization allows them to search for market across the globe.

Diversification allows them to reproduce the same product across a variety of media.

Curran and his colleagues in 1980 illustrate the relationship between economic and market factors

and media content through their analysis of the growth of the human interest story in the press .They

trace how such stories have increasingly replaced public affairs and political coverage in the press

but in particular tabloid press .So to remain commercially viable tabloid newspapers have to attract

the maximum number of readers they can and to do this they concentrate on human stories, which

are popular amongst their target audiences. Thus the economic realities of tabloid newspaper

production necessitate proprietors and workers adopting a product that presents consumers with a

particular way of learning about events.

This is not deliberate act by owners to spread particular views but the out come of economic

necessity. So what structuralists claim is that media workers do have control over the output of the

media but they have to operate within economic environment, which shapes their decisions and

actions the nature of this environment is such that the decisions they make and actions they

undertake are conditioned to producing views that are by and large pro-capitalists, pro-business and

hostile to alternative or minority opinion.

Criticism

First let's compare the position of political economy from the traditional liberal-pluralist approach.

1. Liberal-pluralist approach represents the media as independent of state and political, economic

and social interests...

2. Workers in the industry are seen as possessing a high degree of autonomy or reflector to represent

what is going on in society.

3. Even ownership and control is not seen as trying to account for the output of the media.

4. It agrees that owners and managers are constrained in how they can represent to the world.

5. It also sees the market as an important mechanism determining the content to the media .

However, it argues the content and form of the media is determined not by the actions and options

of the owners but by the choice of the consumers. It believes that the broad shape and nature of the

press is ultimately determined by no one but its readers.

Theories of Communication MCM 511

Liberal-pluralists see the concentration of ownership as irrelevant; the most significant factor is the

ability of the audience to ensure that its needs and wants are reflected in the output of the media.

Some even see this concentration of ownership as beneficial to the performance of the media in

meeting consumer demand. As they believe that the concentrated media organizations tend to bring

the resources required fro comprehensive high quality reporting.

Liberal-Pluralist also reject the Marxist approach on two other grounds. Liberal- pluralists argue

that Marxists fail to distinguish between different kinds of media, especially between private and

publicly owned. They point out public organizations are not driven by profit motives. BBC is not

financed by commercial activities but through the license fee and is therefore free from the need to

make profit and satisfy shareholders. They are regulated by statutory bodies which commit them by

law and practice to impartiality in their output.

Secondly, liberal-pluralists point out that the media regularly report minority interests critical of

capitalism. Not only are there radical programmes but also channels which are committed to

creating space it its schedules for alternative and minority views. The scholars of political economy

theory reject these criticisms.

They argue public and private media may be differently constituted but they are both subject to the

pressures of the market e.g Compete with the market, improve the ratings of their programmes in

order to justify their fee.

Public institutions such as BBC are dominated by those who represent the establishment. Those who

control the BBC are drawn from the ranks of the good and the great. The elite has run the BBC in

the interests of the capitalist class. They are not representative of the British people but the class that

runs the country.

Power of Advertising

Many of the decision media owners and managers make about the commercial viability of their

operations are influenced by the growing dependency of the media on advertising .For

instrumentalists advertisers intervene directly into the operation of the mass media to ensure their

interests are preserved or promoted.

Herman and Chomsky in 1988 in their propaganda model highlight how advertisers discriminate

against certain political messages and view points appearing in the media .Whereas the

structuralists, like Golding and Murdock in 1991 criticized the propaganda model for concentrating

on `strategic intervention' by advertisers and owners while overlooking the contradiction within the

system.

According to them both advertisers and owners operate within structures contain as well as

facilitate, imposing limits as well as offering opportunities. They argue that analyzing these limits is

the key task for a critical political economy.

Constraints and choices are internalized and enforced by the sutures of power within which the

media operate.

Other scholars point out that since media depend on two sources for their revenue; sales and

advertising. So media with small sales can only survive if their audiences are seen as possessing

sufficient purchasing power to attract advertisers. As scholar Curran in 1978 pointed out that

advertisers are not interested in reaching all the people as some people have more disposable

income or greater power over corporate spending and are consequently more sought after by

advertisers. E.g. the best-selling quality newspapers continue to survive in spite of relatively small

circulations because their readers are mainly drawn from wealthier sectors of society.

Similarly scholars say that advertising also accounts for the bias of media products to certain kinds

of audiences. E.g. women's magazines focus their attention on the lives and loves of women

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Theories of Communication MCM 511

between the ages of 16 and 34 because their spending power makes them the most attractive to

advertisers. Thus it is argued there is a bias in the mass media towards more affluent class.

Similarly it is argued that the relationship between supply and demand for media products are more

problematic as it is the demand from advertisers for particular kinds of audiences that is the major

determinant of supply

The preference of consumers is thus secondary to the need for media to satisfy their major source of

revenue, advertisers. Scholar Curran presents ways in which advertising finance has shaped the

nature and content of the press.

Not only have newspapers adjusted their content to attract the kind of readers that advertisers want,

but have also introduced specialized features... in order to segregate readers into the groups that

advertisers want to reach and to direct their attention to particular parts of a paper where they can

be efficiently picked out by advertisers.

A variant of the political economic approach

While the approach centers on media activity as an economic process leading to the commodity (the

media product or content), there is a variant of the political economic approach which suggests

that media really produce audiences, in the sense that they deliver audience attention to advertisers

and shape the behavior of media publics in certain distinctive ways.

New media and old owners

The development of new media technology such as the Internet is seen as shaking off the shackles

of the problem of ownership. The net is one example of how new technology combines old

fashioned , face-to-face communication with mass communication, and as a result allows

individuals more control over what they say, what they are told and whom they talk to. Scholars like

Howard Rheingold advocates that Internet is a means by which the domination of information flow

by large corporations and state can be repelled, and the management of public opinion can be

resisted. The internet provides the potential of the unlimited and unrestricted flow of information.

Every one can have access to the internet and its riches of information and the opportunity to use the

technology to criticize freely government policy and the actions of the state and powerful interests

in society. The Internet and other technologies are seen as spelling the end of the large monopolistic

media corporations by widening choice and empowering individuals. Similarly digital television is

seen as expanding the number of media outlets from which people can information and enjoy

entertainment. Expansion is tied to the enhancement of the capabilities of viewers to select

programmes they want to watch at the time they want to watch them. Interactive services, as one

media manager argues, are taking people where they want to be, when they want to go there and

with people they want to be with.

Counter arguments

Political economists are skeptical of such promises and the rosy picture of the digital future. They

reject the optimistic beliefs that new media technologies will bring about more choice and the

empowerment of media consumer. They claim that it is the affluent that have greatest access to the

new technology .A position aggravated by the process of de-regulation and privatization of the

media industries, which represents a shift in the provision and distribution of cultural goods from

being public services to private commodities. There has been a decline in the public sector of mass

media and in direct public control of telecommunication, under the banner of `deregulation',

`privatization' or `liberalization'.

Similarly to pay for new television services will make it more difficult for those on low incomes to

afford the services and will, increasingly, reduce the diet of material available to them. One scholar

notes that internet usage shows not only a bias to the wealthy but also to men and America. Like

only 12% of internet usage is the global South where two thirds of the world's population live.

Political economists warn about the new technologies becoming increasingly absorbed by the

existing media corporation and incorporated into their commercial world.

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Theories of Communication MCM 511

Scholars argue the convergence of the media, computer telecommunications markets and the de-

regulation and privatization of the media industries around the world are encouraging the further

concentration of ownership. There has been a growing global `information economy' involving an

increasing convergence between telecommunication and broadcasting.

Mergers and acquisitions are the name of the game as the larger media giants seek to control the

transmission of three basic communication products- voice, data and video. The merger between

Time Warner and America Online in 200 indicates that in a market-driven system control of new

technology will be dominated by large media conglomerates, only now they will be large than

before. The euphoria of those who celebrated the internet and the digital revolution is seen as

misplaced as large corporation develop new means to exert their control. The future of new media

is, according to political economists, `a subject to be determined by politics not technology'.

(Herman and McChesney, 1997)

Relevance of political economic theory in today's time

The relevance of political economic theory has been greatly increased by several prominent trends

in media business and technology .First there has been a growth in media concentration worldwide,

with more and more power of ownership being concentrated in fewer hands and with tendencies for

mergers between electronic hardware and software industries.

Critical political- economy theory in brief

· Economic control and logic is determinant

· Media structure tends towards concentration

· Global integration of media develops

· Contents and audiences are commodified

· Diversity decreased opposition and alternative voices are marginalized

· Public interest in communication is subordinated to private interests

· Strength of the approach - The main strength of the approach lies in its capacity for making

empirically testable propositions about market determinations although the latter are so

numerous and complex that empirical demonstration is not easy.

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