Political economy of journalism

Politična ekonomija novinarstva

Course credits:

9.00 ECTS / 60 (30 hours of lectures, 0 hours of exercises, 30 hours of seminars, 0 hours other forms of work)

Course holder:

izr. prof. dr. Jernej Amon Prodnik

Type:

Required

Language:

English

Semester:

First semester

Study degree

2. level

Course execution:

• Postgraduate Programme of Journalism

Prerequisits:

Students are allowed to participate in the course provided that they have completed the enrolment procedure.

Objectives and competences

The main objective of the course is acquiring students with the fundamental theoretical and conceptual understanding about the field of political economy and how this intellectual tradition approaches journalism and media industries. The aim is for the students to be able to connect the acquired knowledge to applied case studies and use it independently in their future research. Students will become equipped with reflexive tools, which will enable them to understand how media industries and journalism operate in the context of global capitalism. They will understand journalism and media, in which journalists work, as parts of a complex and contradictory social totality, in which these institutions are embedded. They will be capable to discern economic aspects of how the media industries operate and be able to associate them to the tendencies in their organisation. By this, they will be able to reflect what limitations media organizations face because of their economic organization and material relations of production, while also being aware of the current technological changes and transformations in globalized capitalism.

Content (Syllabus outline)

The course provides a theoretical and practical introduction to the political economy approach to journalism and media. In media and communication studies political economy is viewed as one of the most important critical research traditions and central approach for a structural and systemic analysis of media and cultural industries as parts of (global) capitalism. The course follows these presuppositions by thematically moving from general topics to more specific issues and is divided in four parts. In the first part, a contextual analysis of how global capitalism, in which inequalities and perturbations have intensified in the past decades, works. In the second part of the course, students get acquainted with the conceptual and theoretical apparatus of political economy approach in media and communication studies. In the third part, journalism and media industries are related to the practices and processes distinctive of capitalist societies through an analysis of specific cases (topics discussed include: influence of capitalist relations of production to journalist practices and labour conditions; the role of media ownership and processes of monopolization; market pressures and economic power in communication sphere; technological changes and the influence of digitalization; asymmetric global communication flows). In the fourth part, some of the key shifts in journalism are identified and analysed in relation to the political and economic changes, with a particular focus on the crisis of the existing economic model of the media industries, which materially supported quality journalism throughout the twentieth century.

Intended learning outcomes:

- Students will learn about political economy approach, which is one of the key critical approaches in media and communication studies. - With the conceptual and theoretical tools of political economy they will critically assess journalism and media in the context of structural transformations in media industries, technological changes and global political and economic currents. - Students will critically reflect how material relations of production in a general sense influence production, distribution and consumption of journalistic content. - They will continuously connect the knowledge obtained during the course to practice and use it in assessing cases and recent social shifts. - They will know how to use political-economic knowledge in their future study and work.

Learning and teaching methods:

Lectures, individual and/or group study assignments with assistance of the teacher, seminars.

Assessment

66,7 % -Oral evaluation 33,3 % -Shorter individual writing essays and exercises

Obligatory literature

Additional literature