Media, Information and Technoculture 2100F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Federal Communications Commission, Telecommunications Act Of 1996, Horizontal Integration
1 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Political economy of media: the story so far. Ardono and horkeimer, theorists of the frankfort school, describe a culture industry, characterized by: big corporate ownership, extreme commodification, standardized, predictable content, indoctrination of audiences, into social roles of work and consumerism required for capitalism. They are cultural snobs who don"t understand find any value in popular pleasures. Don"t credit audiences enough agency and insight to see through culture industry products. Didn"t reckon with changes and diversification in media production. Would have been amazed by digital-enabled, internet-distributed, user-produced content. Marxist political-economy such as adorno & horkeimer"s sees corporate media as encouraging obedience and consent to exploitation. But the changing forms of entertainment production are also obviously of interest to the business sector itself. Up to a point, these two conflicting streams share a vocabulary of concepts. Tendency for a sector of the economy to be dominated by a small number of companies. Monopoly: industry owned by a single company (very rare)
