Abstract
Robert (Bob) McChesney is well known in communication and media studies for his work on political economy and the mass media. Earlier work focused on the power of the corporate media, including an oft-cited critique of deregulation in The Global Media (Herman and McChesney, 2001). He is also known to a wider audience through (at various stages) co-founding the media reform NGO Free Press,1 co-editing the venerable US socialist journal Monthly Review 2 and a long-running set of interviews on media policy, first broadcast as Media Matters on US public radio and still available online.3
So what does McChesney have to say about media policy and new technology? His earlier work tackled the deregulation of telecommunications in the United States, and a 2007 monograph addressed the promise of the ongoing popularity of the Internet, informed by the author’s experiences with Free Press and within the media policy landscape (McChesney, 2007). In the work under review, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy, we see McChesney re-emphasizing the significance of political economy to the study of the Internet, while also grappling with the continued threats to the sustainability of journalism.
In Chapter 2, McChesney explores the relationship between capitalism and democracy, identifying a number of linking points, ranging from labour to advertising to technology. This is then developed (in Chapter 3) into a broader defence of the methodological and substantive benefits of the political economy of communications, including its significance in the founding and continued work of Free Press. This is, however, a book about the Internet, and the online dimension becomes more prominent in Chapter 4. McChesney traces the origins of the Internet (including, crucially, the role of the US Government) and the shifting sands of power and control, especially in terms of telecommunications and infrastructure. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to focus on the ‘old’ concentrations of power alone, and therefore the consideration of ‘new gatekeepers’ in Chapter 5 is particularly important (and contributes to a growing body of work, such as that on algorithms and control (Pasquale, 2015) and on the responsibilities of Internet intermediaries (Laidlaw, 2015)). Monopoly or the prospect of monopolization is considered in respect of human rights (e.g. privacy), intellectual privacy (e.g. patents) and, reflecting another aspect of the Internet’s formative years, the military.
So what does this mean for something that McChesney has cared about for a long time – the vibrancy and sustainability of journalism in the United States? The issue highlighted in Chapter 6 is that of financing, and the emergence of various business models and possible avenues for subsidy and encouragement. (This emerged as a surprising theme of the Leveson Inquiry in the United Kingdom, where both the role of the state and the pressure on advertising income were highlighted by witnesses and picked up in the final report.) Concluding in Chapter 7, McChesney argues that concentrations of power prevent even modest political proposals from being properly aired, and wonders whether the Internet could, after all, allow democracy to triumph over capitalism.
In books of this nature, the opening remarks can sometimes be skimmed by the experienced reader, when an author provides the necessary information on key tropes and literature for the benefit of the less experienced reader – a necessary commitment to accessibility, but not always particularly novel. What is interesting about the early comments in this work is the sharpness with which McChesney identifies and classifies the burgeoning literature on what the established Internet now ‘means’. On one side, we have those who celebrate technological change and highlight how use of the Internet is part of a broader trend towards democratization, disintermediation and freedom. They often use the rhetoric of revolution and a certain sense of being ‘cool’. On the other side, the recent emergence of a solid body of sceptical literature, addressing the threat of the ways in which the Internet is now being used and abused, including how new players exercise power and influence, or how unrealistic hopes are placed in services that may not be as revolutionary as initially thought. McChesney’s key insight here is that both ‘camps’ neglected the political–economic context and engage mostly in a dialogue with each other rather than with broader fields. His own influences are wide-ranging, including a Habermasian concept of the public sphere, and a recognition (shared by this reviewer) of the need to revisit the work of the Canadian communications historian Harold Innis, who wrote of the shifts in medium and the distinctions between influence over time and influence over space (e.g. Innis, 1951).
Recent developments (such as the ongoing controversy over ‘net neutrality’ or the ability of firms providing Internet connections to link up with content providers and/or differentiate between varying uses of the Internet by users) are placed in the context of the longer running struggle to understand the approach of differently constituted governments and states to emerging technologies. McChesney questions the long-term impact of what he rightly identifies as an unusual alliance between countercultural voices and free marketeers in the mid-1990s (crucial for understanding today’s Internet, as it represents the point of commercialization, expansion and the first major wave of Internet ‘laws’). He also explores how the US government might support independent, critical journalism through various measures, ranging from subsidies to vouchers. Indeed, distance has allowed for an overdue reassessment of the role of the state in supporting technological innovation, such as Mazzucato’s emphasis on the significance of public information in relation to the Internet, Apple’s iPod and emerging fields such as nanotechnology (Mazzucato, 2013). The importance of capitalism, technological determinism and exceptionalism has also been observed as a significant feature of the Californian new media ‘scene’ in relation to social media and sharing economy enterprises (Marwick, 2013).
McChesney’s account is a valuable response to what is, at times, an overwhelming combination of optimism (new technology makes life better) with scepticism (regulation makes life worse). While arguably focused too much on what is plausible or imaginable in the US political environment, the author has set out a strong case for a different approach to the Internet and grounded it firmly in academic research. He does not really address what has come into sharper focus in the present decade, namely the use of social media to harass, marginalize and drown out what may be already marginalized voices. This is however understandable, given McChesney’s ongoing concern with political journalism as a check on the power of capital. Moreover, his frame of democracy does lend itself to application to these broader issues, just as Free Press have made common ground with Black and Hispanic activist groups in its net neutrality campaigning.
Since McChesney’s book was published, we have also seen unfeasible levels of excitement around the promise of automation and the sharing economy, without due attention to the impact of these developments on wages, job security and public interest regulation. Technological developments can sometimes be oriented towards the concerns of the 1%. McChesney reminds us that a polity faces choices on how to react to technological change, and that specific legislative and regulatory action responds to higher level framing of the promises and threats of the new media.