ABSTRACT
Since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 and continuing throughout the turbulent political and economic years that followed, the question of how economic issues are understood by the broader public has become a growing concern. After the GFC, dominant orthodox economic theories, based around the ideology of the self-regulating market and the rational actor, came under limited (if short-lived) scrutiny, while economic and business journalism was critiqued as the “dog that didn’t bark” (Starkman 2014). However, despite an increased recognition that the way economic issues are framed in the news media has massive political and economic repercussions, there is little evidence of lasting change in how they are mediated. Therefore, it is essential that the academy continues to take seriously how economic and financial journalism reports economic news and the structures and practices that underly this content. This chapter discusses the key themes of research into economic journalism before outlining the aims, rationale and structure of the book.
