The Political Economy Section examines the role of power in the production, distribution and exchange of mediated communication. Drawing from the rich history of political economic theory, section members study social relations in their totality, consider how they have developed historically, evaluate them according to standards of social justice, and intervene to bring about a more just and democratic world.
The research interests of section members include developing a richer
theoretical foundation in communication research by incorporating an understanding
of how structures of power operate, particularly in the process of transforming
messages into commodities. Specifically, this means research on the global
political economy which is centrally dependent on communication for its
growth and on transnational media companies, which are increasingly in
control of communication systems. It also includes research on how this
global political economy is constituted out of various national corporate
and government institutions as well as class formations that mediate global
and local power.
Research interests also include the conflicts that arise over who benefits
from control over communication resources. This research documents the
interventions of workers, particularly over the consequences of an increasingly
sophisticated international division of communication labour, and of women
and racial minorities who seek to redress fundamental imbalances in global
communication power. Recently, this research has expanded to include social
movements in the communication arena, the state of the public sphere in
an increasingly privatized audio-visual space, and the status of citizenship
in a world that addresses people primarily as consumers.
Political economy has an historic commitment to praxis or the unity of
research and social intervention. As a result, it has attracted members
with a wide range of commitments to social change. Over the years this
has always included involvement in the movements to bring about a New
World Information and Communication Order, now focused on the McBride
Roundtable process. In addition, the section has attracted members with
commitments to the rights of workers in the communication industries and
of citizens to the fullest access to the means of communication.
In recent years the section has worked to support its commitment to multidisciplinary
research by organizing joint sessions with other IAMCR sections on the
topics of gender, race, ethnicity, and cultural studies. The section recognizes
the need to engage questions about the relationship between social class,
historically a central coordinate on the map of political economy, and
gender, race, and nationality. It is also committed to examining how political
economy, and its particular understanding of power as embedded in markets
and institutions, relates to the field of cultural studies and its focus
on the social construction of meaning in texts and of power at work in
the micro relations of social life.
The section recognizes the need to take up these new challenges even as
it addresses its historic mission of research and social intervention
on the manifold dimensions of a global political economy increasingly
shaped by the power of transnational communication and information companies.
—prepared by Vincent Mosco, former Section Head