ABSTRACT
This chapter presents media political economy analysis and situates this in relation to alternative approaches. Classical political economy (CPE) had expounded the labour theory of value, which located wealth creation in the surplus value extracted from workers. Neoclassical economics propounded a new theory of value derived from consumer preferences exercised in markets. Media economics is a subfield of economics that analyses the media, communications and cultural industries using economic concepts. This work takes different forms with varying levels of integration into media. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and is concerned with the nature, sources and extent of the knowable, and the justifications for beliefs. In the post-war period Western scholarship dominated by what Pietil calls classical behavioural mass communication research. Critical scholarship needs to examine both iterations of ideology and yet remain alert to signs of conflict, contradiction in the production and consumption of meanings. CPE emerged as an articulated set of claims and research priorities in the 1970s.
