ABSTRACT
The distinctive contribution of the critical political economy of media approaches has been to examine the implications of advertising as a system of nancing media and the inuence of marketers on media content, media provision, and access to communications. Classic contributions examined advertisers’ inuence on non-advertising content and media rms’ behavior. The problems they identied are of central concern today, but critical political economy theory and analysis need to be updated to deal with transformations in the ways marketing communications are produced and circulated within the changing dynamics of media-advertising relationships. Key features include the expansion of marketers’ self-promotion (“owned” media), the “disaggregation” of media and advertising, as marketers bypass media to target and reach consumers directly through online behavioral advertising, and the “integration” of media and advertising through product placement, sponsored stories, and native advertising (Turow 2011; Hardy 2013). This chapter explores the strengths and limitations of political economy perspectives and offers guidelines for the contemporary analysis and critique of marketer inuences on communications.
