Abstract
This is a useful slim text in that it points to schools of thought in economics (institutional, evolutionary) that have rarely been applied to the study of media industries and thus encourages a broadening of the field of media economics. That said, there are some major problems with this introductory book. For instance, in the conclusion of the chapter on critical political economy of the media, the authors outline a recent debate between Fuchs and Garnham about the contemporary state of political economy, which Garnham dismisses as romanticised Marxism. Clearly, the authors are on the side of Garnham in his assessment but are content merely to restate his argument rather than engage in the debate or give an account of the critiques of Garnham’s position, which is deeply problematic in a text of this type. This is especially unfortunate as it may lead unwitting undergraduates to believe that the political economy approach is as crude as the authors have us believe. The chapter on institutional economics introduces key concepts such as bounded rationality, transaction costs and path dependency and shows how they may be useful in analysis of contracts in media firms, broadcasting property and media policy. It is to be regretted that there is not more media scholarship from an institutional perspective that the authors could have drawn upon to illustrate its usefulness in media analysis. The chapter on evolutionary economics is welcome in that it emphasises that evolution can be about cooperation and reciprocity as well as competition but it is very much coloured by ‘creative economy’ accounts of the importance of cultural industries for economic growth and innovation in the wider economy. This section especially would have benefited from a discussion of the evidential basis of such claims. Not to test such theories against the evidence even in a cursory way is again problematic. The idea of being more economically heterodox when analysing media industries is undoubtedly a strong one even if not fully realised by the brevity of the treatment of new approaches in this book. What is missing, however, in the account of these approaches presented here is how they relate to the moral concerns of political economy. How do these economic theories allow us to better understand media activity from the perspectives of citizens and not merely the perspectives of producers, consumers and even critics?