Intro to the Media
Fall 2016 – MACS 101

Marx and Political Economy
• Marx's critique of capitalism is especially important for
Media Studies. He believed that the organization of a
society's economic system, the base, largely
determines its major institutions and cultural forms, the
superstructure
• In our class on Production, we start talking
about ideology. Per the e-text book how can
you define ideology? How is it related with
Media?

Zizek
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8ibrfXvp
Q

• From this perspective, the world represented in popular
music, movies, and television shows creates a false
consciousness that prevents people from organizing
together to improve their lives.
• Some scholars have criticized these ideas from
Frankfurt School. From your perspective, what
can be their critique?

Culture Industy
Marx
• “the media reproduced
the ideas of the ruling
capitalist class”
Frankfurt School
theorists
• “The rationalized culture
industry of the twentieth
century created a uniform
and thoroughly
commodified mass
culture that left little room
for critical, dissenting
points of view.”

• Culture Industry: The rationalized
production of media contents
With its emphasis on marketability, the culture industry dispenses entirely with
the “purposelessness” that was central to art's autonomy.

Three Basic Elements of Contemporary
Political Economic Analysis of the Media
• Commodification, therefore, is the process of making
something into a good that can be bought or sold. Marx
argued that a fundamental process of the capitalist
system was the commodification of human labor.
• Discuss how sex, celebrities and childhood
have been commodified. Can you give other
examples like those in the etextbook?

Consuming Kids
• http://illinois.kanopystreaming.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/user/
20667/playlists/220046

Three Basic Elements of Contemporary
Political Economic Analysis of the Media
• Spatialization is the process of overcoming the
constraints of geographical space with, among other
things, mass media and communication technologies.
• Do you know other examples of global media?

Three Basic Elements of Contemporary
Political Economic Analysis of the Media
• Structuration, refers to the process of creating
social relations.
• Last week, we talk about agency and structure.
As structuration is a process, how do you think
that your consumption of media has shaped
your lifestyle and taste?

Ownership, Concentration, Integration and
Neoliberalism
• Political economic analysis of the media is especially
concerned with issues of ownership and control.
• Per the E-text chapter on Political Economy,
what is media concentration?

Hollywood Film Production
and Integration

Hollywood Film Production
and Integration
• Based on the previous definitions, have you
heard of any horizontal or vertical integration
related to any of the six companies in the
chart?

Comic Book
(original contents)
Movie Production
Distribution
&Exhibition
Game Production
& Distribution
Broadcasting

Hollywood Film Production
and Integration
• In addition to negative economic outcomes,
political economists of the media worry about
negative political consequences that can result
from concentration
• What kind of possible threats to democracy
can you imagine as a result of media
concentration?

• Neoliberalism overlaps with media studies in that
media represent the messages that encourage people
to engage in self-governmentality—that is, take care of
issues on their own through the marketplace.
• Per the E-text chapter on Political Economy,
what is deregulation?

Neoliberalism
Privatization
• The transfer of
ownership of property
or businesses from a
government to a
privately owned
entity.
Deregulation
• “to open up more space for
competition and thus
remove the need for
government regulation of
oligopolies or monopolies.”
(from e-text)
• Revision, reduction, or
elimination of laws and
regulations that hinder free
competition in supply of
goods and services, thus
allowing market forces to
drive the economy.

In our workshop
• Find two recent news articles that discuss an example media industry
concentration and answer the following questions:
1. Which companies were involved?
2. What elements of the process (production, distribution,
exhibition, etc.) were merged?
3. Is this an example of horizontal and/or vertical
integration?
4. What effects might this merger have on democratic goals?
5. Were labor issues discussed in the articles? If so how did
they add to our understanding? If not what could labor
issues have added to our understanding of these mergers?