ABSTRACT
This chapter asks: What is the critique of the political economy of the media and communication? It discusses how topical the approach of the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication is today. It analyses the status of this field. At the international level, there is a longer tradition in the Critical Political Economy of Media/Communication, especially in the United Kingdom and North America. Since the start of the new crisis of capitalism in 2008, the interest in Marx’s works has generally increased. At the same time, communicative and ideological features of societal changes’ unpredictable turbulences have become evident. This contribution introduces some specific approaches. It also discusses aspects of why the complex, multidimensional, open, and dynamic research approach of the critique of capitalism and society that goes back to Marx’s theory remains relevant today. It stresses that there are many elements in Marx’s works that can help us to critically understand communication: critical journalism, limits on the freedom of the press, the analysis of the commodity form, the analysis of labour, exploitation, class, surplus value, globalisation, crisis, modern technology, the General Intellect, communication, the means of communication, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, dialectics, ideologies, social struggles, and democratic alternatives.
