Week 2 - Television, Film and Video Media Reading Diary

Week 2 - Political Economy

This week we began exploring ‘political economy’ and how this mode of research can be used when analysing television and film. Political economy is defined as ‘the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources’ (Mosco, 1996: 25) When researching the political economy of film and television, it broadens your findings and allows you to research parts of media that have not been thought about before such as investigating the conditions under which media institutions and organisations are formed and work (Long, P and Wall, T, 2012, p.173).

The lecture for this week focused on the context of film and television and highlighted two key concepts, political economy and the public sphere. Firstly, we went over political economy and concluded that political economy studies the structure and policies of communication within their social context. We then considered the key theorist Jürgen Habermas and began to understand his views on what he called the ‘public sphere’. The ‘public sphere’ is used by Habermas to describe a conceptual rather than literal space in which democratic public debate can take place (Long, P and Wall, T, 2012, p.183).

The readings that I completed this week enhanced by knowledge about the political economy of service broadcasting as well as history and comparisons of different audiences. The reading I chose was also looking into the political economy of media, focussing more on the Hollywood film industry. This differed to my set readings as I was considering the film industry compared to the television industry. In the set readings, I gained knowledge about audience-as-market and audience-as-public, relating audience-as-market to the US commercial broadcasting system and audience-as-public to public service broadcasting. The difference between the two is that the audience-as-public consists not of consumers, but of citizens who must be reformed, educated, informed as well as entertained (Ang, L. 1991). The reading I chose begins to consider the presence of Hollywood films and the effects it has on the audience as well as looking into the power and immensity of US popular culture which was valued at $33 Billion in 2000 (Miller, T, 2001 p.4)

Choosing a reading of my own allowed me to enhance my knowledge on researching the political economy of media, as it gave me an insight into how different aspects of media can be researched. This has brought up a deep passion for researching political economy of media and I have learnt that comparisons can play a big part in my own research which I will apply from now on.

References

Mosco, V. (1996) The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal, London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) ‘Political Economy of the Media’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson. pp. 172-185

Chapter 2 ("Audience-as-market and audience-as-public") in Ang, Ien (1991) Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge

Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria and Richard Maxwell (2001) Global Hollywood. London, British Film Institute