Ain’t Nothing But a Free Lunch, Baby!

Dallas Smythe Came to radical p-e slowly – life

experiences (Depression, work at US Dept. of Labor-tracking media industry, labor, trade unions)

Became first economist at FCC 1948-Inst. Of Communication Research at

Univ Illinois (first PhD program in Comm).

Smythe’s early academic research

Need for public broadcasting Political economy of the electronic media Audience commodity With McCarthyism in US, Smythe returned

to native CA and set up program in comm. At U Regina

1974 SFU>worked with Melody, pub’d Dependency Road, died in 1992

Smythe contrasted admin vs critical comm. research

Criticizes administrative research in US context:

Research emanating from government propaganda activities in WWI and II

Rise of market research Asks: why don’t they consider critique of

advertising?

Smythe is concerned with audience commodity

Consciousness Industry Free lunch The process by which we become

consumers How are audiences constructed by the

mass media?

Smythe challenges communication scholars

Asks why haven’t western Marxist analyses considered mass communication a valuable object of critique?

We need to ask: what economic function for capital do mass media serve?

A look at capitalist modes of production and of ideology

Blindspot…

In Marxist studies: mass media of communication and PR, marketing, public opinion, and advertising industries

Rich stuff to tackle: consumer consciousness, leisure, commodity fetishism, work, alienation

He said this in 1977. Do you think this is still the case?

Smythe contends that…

Audiences comprise the commodity form of mass-produced, advertiser-supported communications under monopoly capitalism

Calls for a Marxist theory of advertising and of branded commodities

And there’s a huge industry here:

The media companies themselves The advertisers that are attracted to the

specific media The groups that track the impact of the

advertising on the media-watchers

Babe

Looks at p-e of communication in light of a critique of mainstream economics

Neoclassical economics origins – from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman

Human relations subsumed as commodity exchange relations, marketplace as pure competition

Citizen vs. consumer debates, E-commerce vs. e-commons debates

Administrative Communication Research

Dewey-Schramm-Lasswell Shannon & Weaver Lazerfeld-Hovland (see Everett Rogers’ History of

Communication Studies for an overview)…

Admin research…

Positivist, empirical, individualistic Surveys, polling Quantitative methodology Focus on attitudinal and behavioral

change Making advertising more effective Media effects

Theorizing political economy, a la Babe

Distinguish neoclassical economists from political economists

PE are dissidents from neoclassical regimes, concerned with power, change and inequities

They seek to address the “impact of laws, regulation, political influence, and governmental processes on economic activity, and conversely the manner and degree whereby economic activity & financial matters impinge upon legislation & legislative processes”

Looking at the economy as a system of power

What are some examples of this? Consider current Canadian

communication policy… Neoliberalism Harris cutbacks in education….

Clement and Williams definition

“Study of processes whereby social change is located in the historical interaction of the economic, political, cultural, and ideological moments of social life, with the dynamic rooted in socio-economic conflict” (my emphasis)

How does this compare with Mosco’s entry points?

Liberal political economy (Babe)

Neoclassical Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations Concern with self-love- Interested in self-

interested & materialistic motives Wealth of nations accumulated with greed and

self-interest of individuals in a competitive marketplace

(for a contemporary criticism see Linda McQuaig’s All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism)

Marxist political economy (Babe)

Critique of market system Concern with worker alienation and

exploitation Critique of neoclassical position for not

addressing social change Paul Baran & Paul Sweezy – concern with

class analysis – Monthly Review

Institutional PE (Babe)

Veblen, Innis, John Kenneth Galbraith Concern with organizational structure of

society Economies evolve – they look at technical

infrastructure – military-industrial complex and corporate technostructure

Mythologies (Babe)

Market as mythology Technology – machine as mythology Evolution or march of time as mythology These Three M’s exemplify contemporary

neoconservatism