Introduction

Economics is still far from being a significant part of humanities and social science work on media and communication. More often than not, economics is called upon to support reasoning and as an illustration or justification for changes and evolutions that are considered indisputable. In these situations, the economy generally resembles technology: it cannot be called into question. It illuminates the course of events. And in the last few decades it was essentially liberal, or more precisely neo-liberal thinking that inspired the approaches of economists.

It is the merit of a few pioneers (Dallas Smythe, Herbert Schiller, Thomas Guback, and Nicholas Garnham, among others) to have laid the foundations for a new and different approach that places economic logic in its increasingly internationalized historical and cultural context, and links it with social logic, thereby explaining the development of media and cultural industries. As Vincent Mosco rightly stated in a book that was published more than twenty years ago, but that is still relevant today: what defines the political economy of communication is the focus ‘on the relation between the production, distribution and consumption of communication in historical and cultural context. This comprehensive analysis of the commodity form in communication includes an examination of print, broadcast and new electronic media, the role and the function of the audience, and the problem of social control’ (Mosco, 1996).

The authors mentioned above proposed political economy as an analytical orientation due to transformations that were beginning to assert themselves in the function and role of media in various societies. These transformations have steadily increased, ultimately generating profound mutations characteristic of a (globalized) order of information and communication. More and more researchers are trying to study, specify in-depth, and confront these mutations.