Political Economy of Journalism Essay

The political economy of news media is foundd on Marxs follow-up of capitalism. With this in mind assess the pursuance professed(prenominal)s and amateurs fecal matter build powerful partnerships to nominate important journalism (J unrivaleds & Salter 2002 29)The marge political economy originally denoted the record of the conditions under which economic take was unionised in the capitalistic system. In Marxism, political economy studies the means of employment peculiar(prenominal)ally of capital, and how that manifests as economic activity (Marx, 1867). Its simple, political economy derives more of its analytic insights from the Marxist analysis of capitalism as a trendl of toil, delineate in the graduation instance by the dealinghip between the forces of realise, or the technologies and techniques by which material and symbolic goods and function be make upd, and the favorable relations of issue, or the relations between complaisant agents ( much(pren ominal) as owners, editors and journalists in this case) by dint of with(predicate) which the work of such goods and services atomic number 18 organised, and the associated rooms of dispersion of the economic harvest-tide. This coupling of the forces and social relations of mathematical product provides the base from which separate social affectes, and the overall social structure of a historically specific mode of production, ar organised.In the political economy of journalism, capitalism is identified as a mode of production characte make growd by unprecedented dynamism, ceaselessly diversityizing its plenteous processes with forward-looking technologies and new arrive ats of organising the boil process (Mosco 1995 43). Karl Marx described in great(p) this relationship between the economic base and the social structure in these cost In the social production of their vitality men, enter into decided relations that are indispensable and independent of their al low, relations of production that will pair to a definite stage of knowledge of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure, the real basis on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite readys of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life (Marx 1867).In his three volume work The study Age Economy, Society and Culture, the sociologist Manuel Castells has proposed that since the mid-eighties a neweconomy has emerged that is planetary, networked and in variateational. trance this new techno-economic framework remains capitalist in form, it is found upon what Castells describes as an informational sort of than an industrial mode of development, which he defines in these terms In the industrial mode of development, the main arising of productivity lies in the introductions of n ew energy inceptions, and in the big businessman to decentralize the use of energy through the production and circulation processes. In the new, informational mode of development, the source of productivity lies in the technology of intimacy generation, information processing, and symbol communication What is specific to the informational mode of development is the action of knowledge upon knowledge itself as the main source of productivity. I call this mode of development informational, constituted by the emergence of a new technological paradigm based on information technology (Castells 1996 17).Castells has proposed that the rise of a network society has its origins in roughly central elements derivatives of the new administration of accumulation, or the nexus between production and consumption, identified by Castells as the information technology paradigm, which is based upon the bus diffusion of information and communication technologies. The new economy is networked an d it is based upon information networks such as the profits, as well as the networked enterprise becoming the dominant form of economic organisation, at whose heart is no monthlong the capitalist firm, barely international food markets and business projects based upon short-term strategical alliances and partnerships. For Castells, the networked enterprise is a logical corollary of electronic business, as it is based around the Internet-based, interactive, networked tie-in between producers, foolrs, and service providers (Castells 2001 75).It has never been so cushy to create information, and at the homogeneous snip it has never been so effortful to make a living glowering its practice the market is bigger than ever, but the income is the lowest in history, in recounting terms. This trend is clearly visible in the USA, so many ms ancestor nigh what is going to happen with the counterpoise of the western countries. The scene is quite disturbing, at least in the USA, where major give-and-take authorships seduce seen how their diffusion has fallen from 62 million copies to 49 million since the Internet became mainstream with an clear access for most of the citizens of that country 15 years ago. Around a cytosine newspapers were oblige to stopprinting in paper format. During the same period, the number of readers of digital journalism has increased from nought to 75 million. The decrease in advertisements, which represents the main income in paper journalism, has reduced the profit drastically, which after(prenominal)ward has brought massive lay-offs as read in some of the mastheads of the main European newspapers (1).El Pais, reference Spanish newspaper, pink-slipped much than 30 per cent of its staff after announcing a dismissal program. The company notified 129 of its workers that they were fired via e-mail the past 10th of November, trance many of them were at their positions. The reason of the verbiage was the mismanagement of J uan Luis Cebrin, CEO of El Pas, according to Maruja Torres, journalist of that newspaper, in a lecture at University of Barcelona Cebrin wooly-minded 5 billion euro gambling in casino capitalism, buying radios in Miami and Latin-American TVs that were absolutely worthless. He essentialed to be a financial shark in Wall Street, but he real was a little sardine who do everything wrong. He wasted the win of our work in the adventure of the best newspaper of the Spanish democracy (2).In the go years and due to the systemic crisis see by this sector, the main newspapers contract approach many problems and several of them have been forced to move totally their paper editions to alone On-line editions, like Pblico, some other Spanish newspaper, that stopped printing its paper edition a little longer than eight months ago, because of the decrease in its sales. (3) pa partingpapers financially survive in two ways, one is the income generated from advertisings and the other is fro m subscriptions. Advertising is at the focalize of the debate, because, among other things, is the main source of financial support and therefore for the survival of handed-down newspapers. As noted in The Economist in its special report called Bulletins from the future (4), the bug out of the revenues had descended while at the same time the income of On-line media grew enormously. It is not only that the ideal of business has changed but overly the toughie of consumption has changed.The Internet has brought an unprecedented renewal in the way we create, handle and dust information. It has demolished the old methods and has opened straight-out possibilities for the elaboration of a top-quality product with information. Brian Winston (1986, 1998), argues that, in contrast to claims that we are shortly in the midst of an information revolution, the historical development of technologies such as telephone, radio, TV,satellites, computers and Internet are marked farther more by continuities rather than significant transformations. Winston also argues that, insofar as technologies whitethorn still contain potential to scrap the dominant pattern of social relations. That its what we are seeing in the echt performing of relationship between citizens and journalism, where citizens are acting as journalists contributing sum that is published on traditional media.This form of citizen journalism includes things like publication of photographs or video taken by amateurs who happened to be at the right stray at the right time, such as the capital of the United Kingdom bombings in July 2005 or London Riots in 2011. It could also include comment and whimsey by a blogger that later appears on a mainstream media news site. Most of the time these people are not paying(a) for their contribution. Citizen Journalism in this context is tight always contextualized, edited and proofread by professional journalists (Quin & Lamble 2008). The website Ohmy bleaks is o ne of the pioneers of citizen journalism, having more than 50.000 citizen reporters as of March 2007. Jean mo of OhmyNews supranational express every story went through an extensive screening and copyediting process forwards it was published. Although sometimes good quality blog content appears in mainstream media.The key cry is quality. UK journalist Jemima Kiss concedes that the cream of bloggers will be experts in their field. Blogs are a lot an extension of peoples trade or their passions (5). It is logical that traditional media should sample out their skills, but traditional gatekeepers have important skills that should not be underestimated. Min of OhmyNews concurs We believe bloggers can work mitigate with professional assistance from trained journalists. On the other hand, we also believe professional journalists can expand their view and scope greatly with fresh input from citizen reporters. News media as a whole can offer more diverse and sizable content to read ers by tapping into the wealth of Netizens joint wisdom (Quin & Lamble 2008). However, citizen journalism assume the role of journalists and that necessitates a debate about who is a journalist. Citizen Journalism sites succeed because they are easy and cheap to set up. Salaries are frequently not an issue because people bid their time.This means these bloggers or citizen reporters dont want to be journalists, they just want to be heard and respected. (Min 2007) The first form of citizen journalism is likely to continue because traditional medianeed quality content, and in many cases they are not paying for it. The spot form requires energy and passion to keep up itself, and a form of revenue or business model. Arash Amel, a senior analyst for the media analysis company Screen Digest, said The business model for user-generated sites has been build it and mete out it and let someone else worry about the business model. News bay window admitted early in 2007 that its Fox phot ographic film studio and television content would be more important than home make clips for capturing online video advertising. Screen Digest expects this market to expand for billions before 2012 (Edgecliffe-Johnson and van Duyn 2007).archer and Willis see collaboration as the drive force behind the explosion of citizen media as passionate and motivated people produce new forms of media. The democratization of media has levelled the competitive landscape painting and forced dramatic changes in the news business (Bowman and Willis 2005 7). They reject the notion that citizen journalism means the ends of the new media companies or journalism. However, in the last few years, the journalism has been through a lot of troubles because of Internet, but also thanks to the Network and how was changed the pattern of consume information, a lot of possibilities has been disclosed. One of them is crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe (2006) was the first person who has coined its definition, he describes crowdsourcing as a process that distribute problem-solving and production model.In the classic use of the term, problems are go around to an un cognize group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Usersalso known as the crowdsubmit solutions. Solutions are then owned by the entity that programme the problem in the first placethe crowdsourcer. The contributor of the solution is, in some cases, compensated either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition. In other cases, the only rewards may be kudos or intellectual satisfaction. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from amateurs or volunteers working in their spare time, or from experts or junior-grade businesses which were unknown to the initiating organization (Howe 2006).Concluding remarks the global production of information and mass media is not built over the grounds of objectivity and the quality of a truthful information, as they would make us believe. Journalism in this case is not any varied from any ot her capitalist industry. The production of information follows the laws of political economy, that is to say, the maximization of profits and thanks tothat fact the media owners trade freely with information like any other commodity on the market that is at the service of the capitalist system.BIBLIOGRAPHYAXFORD, HUGGINS 2001, New Media and Politics, wise overtations, London. BENDER, DAVENPORT, DRAGER, FREDLER 2009, Reporting for the Media, Oxford University Press, Oxford. CASTELLS, Manuel 1996a, The travel of the Network Society, vol. 1 of The Information Age Economy, Society and Culture, Blackwell, Malden, Mass. 2001. The Internet Galaxy Reflections on Economy, Society and Culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford. COTTLE Simon 2003. News, Public Relations and Power, Sage Publications, London. FLEW, Terry 2002, New Media an introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford. JONES, SALTER 2012, Digital Journalism, Sage Publications, London. MARX, Karl 1867, Capital, Verlag von Otto Meissner, Hamburg. MOSCO, Vincent 1995, The governmental Economy of Communication, Sage, Calif. QUINN, Stephen LAMBLE, Stephen 2008, Online Newsgathering Research and Reporting for Journalism, focal Press, Elsevier, Burllington. SALWEN, GARRISON, DRISCOLL 2005, Online News and the Public, Lawrence WINSTON, Brian 1986, Misunderstanding Media, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, London. BOWMAN, WILLIS 2005, The Future is Here, further Do News Media Companies See It?, Nieman Reports. addressable from http//www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/100558/The-Future-Is-Here-But-Do-News-Media-Companies-See-It.aspx cited 2012 EDGECLIFFE, JOHNSON & VAN DUYN 2007, Murdoch is sight of Dow Jones. 21 June 2007. uncommitted from http//www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cde8a968-2016-11dc-9eb1 000b5df10621.htmlaxzz2CPrMqwcR cited 2012 HOWE, Jeff 2006, The Rise of Crowdsourcing , Wired Magazine. Available from http//www.wired.com/wired/ instrument/14.06/crowds.html MIN, Jean 2007. In terview. 29 May 2007. Available from http//laazotea.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/entrevista-jean-k-mings-ohmynews.html cited 2012 CARLING, John. El momento crucial. El Pas. 10 May 2009. Available from http//elpais.com/diario/2009/05/10/domingo/1241927553_850215.html cited 2012 TORRES, Maruja. Preguntes que els periodistes ens haurem de fer cada