The Responsibilities of Communication Scholars

Moral Responsibility

Philosophical reflection on moral responsibility has a long history. Whenever there are both freedom and rules, responsibility is obligatory. In philosophical terms, communication scholars as individual agents must assume moral responsibility. In moral philosophy, either from a merit-based or a consequentialist view, human beings should be in charge of the negative effects of their behavior in social relations.

Confucians claim benevolence as a virtue, and propriety (Li) as a norm; these are kinds of responsibilities. Kant presupposes free will; he believes that human beings have the freedom to choose, so they are morally responsible for their choices. Max Weber’s ethic of responsibility holds that since human beings are able to take account of the behavior of others, they are thereby oriented to moral judgments (Weber, 1978). As Denzin demonstrates following C. Wright Mills (1959), the “critical sociological imagination” insists on moral responsibility in all kinds of interpersonal relations, as well as in the social relations of ethnicity, nation, gender, and class (Denzin, 2009, pp. 383, 385, 393). “As an interventionist pedagogy, the critical imagination is hopeful of change” (Denzin, 2009, p. 385). Moral philosophy as a whole echoes the sociological imagination in its own humanistic terms, arguing that educators are morally responsible for constructing societies of hope and freedom (Carey, 1997). Not being self conscious of it in their teaching and research does not nullify that obligation.

Political economy has emphasized the moral dimension of communicative action from its intellectual beginnings. Adam Smith, the founder of classical political economy was actually a professor of moral philosophy. His work is full of ethical concerns and moral anxiety. Although he speaks of self-regard (self-interest) in The Wealth of Nations, he encourages people to agree with him regarding altruism (compassion) in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. If the main point in The Wealth of Nations is the growing of wealth, then the main point in Moral Sentiments is the restriction of desires. Smith hopes people will embrace the sentiments of the heart at all times—to traverse the dark forest of selfish desires and to nurture the candle of morality, as the language of his day would state it. In the political economy tradition, morality is considered to be praise or blame in terms of public mediation. This tradition uses morality to facilitate social harmony and reduce conflict.

As critics of the status quo communications industry and of mainstream communication research, the political economy of communication is in a marginal position in North American, even in worldwide, academia. But marginalization did not push political economists historically to adopt an ostrich policy of avoiding responsibility, or cater to the interests and desires of the authorities. The political economy tradition always criticizes traditional empirical communication research for maintaining its frames of reference uncritically. This tradition insists that communication scholars should reflect on the preconditions and bias in communication research (Smythe, 1954), and pay attention to moral affairs in communication such as un-free and dramatically unequal information flows.

Outside the dominant empiricist paradigm, political economy speaks with integrity and consistency in calling communication scholars to be active agents of moral responsibility. They can promote the greater efficiency of communication activities, and receive trust and respect from society at the same time. Communications permeate the world everywhere; even inner-communication which deeply influences people’s thinking and behavior can influence the healthy development of society. Communication scholars should consider the outcome of their research, since ruptures in the communications world may seriously influence social development. In Foucault’s view, communication scholars should discipline themselves through the inculcation of self-policing as individuals and interiorize the external gaze of authority (Foucault, 1980, p. 155). Communication scholars should inspect themselves carefully to make their activities accord with moral standards rather than methodological ones.

Telling the Truth

The concept of truthtelling is of ancient vintage, and seeking the truth is the appeal of every scholar. As the mother of all subjects, the original meaning of philosophy is seeking and telling the truth. The historical mission of scholarship is to uncover the truth of reality, to create new knowledge through research for understanding real social and cultural existence. In ancient Greece, Aristotle believed humans could get the truth through epistemology and logic. In China, Confucius regarded Tao as the ultimate concern of shi (scholar-bureaucrat), stressing the Tao as the foundation of the value orientation of shi. Tao is the true cognition of the world.

The 20th century was called the century of truth and methodology. Heidegger declared that people have the responsibility to speak the truth and should always give the pursuit of truth priority. No matter whether communication educators are scholars, public intellectuals, or teachers, their foremost responsibility is telling the truth. As Sartre puts it for education, educators should refuse to keep quiet about what they see as inequalities and injustices in the world (Scriven, 1999, p. xii).

In its contribution to critical pedagogy, political economy calls on the field of communication to take the pursuit and telling of the truth as its foremost obligation. That means it must disenchant communications research, deconstruct the hyper-dominant authorities and desacralize the mainstream ideology. As scholars, two types of lying should be avoided: the “direct or straightforward lie” method and the “blank pages” method (Pork, 1990). The “blank pages” method differs from the “direct lie,” because the former attempts not to make direct false statements, but rather selects facts to create an overall distorted picture. At the same time, while avoiding blank-page omissions, communication scholars ought not to substitute narrow slices of communication phenomena for the whole communication world.

The political economy tradition exposes the political economic power controlling the communications industry. rather than simply describing surface phenomena. In 1967, when Noam Chomsky discussed the responsibility of intellectuals during the Vietnam war, he pointed out that intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. Edward Said, himself a leading public intellectual, wrote that intellectuals are “endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public” (Said,1996, p. 11; cf. 1994). Henry Giroux is furthering initiatives like these with his “Truthout Public Intellectual Project.” Academics in the political economy tradition who have emerged as sociopolitical critics on the public stage—notably Dallas Smythe, Herbert Schiller, and Robert McChesney—contribute to this platform in its search for more effective ways to speak to multiple audiences about serious social issues.

Communication scholars, enabled by society to occupy certain social roles, know how to access information. As a result, they should use their intellect to evaluate society and culture rather than merely use it instrumentally (Held, 1983). “Pedagogical practices are always moral and political;” therefore, “new regimes of truth are sought. What is true must also be just and right” (Denzin, 2009, pp. 381, 383). Giroux (2003) also integrates morality into critical pedagogy, and Christians (2009, 2011) argues more broadly that ethics is critical to research, to theorizing democracy, and to professional media practice. Responsible communication scholars should have the courage to accept the mission of discovering knowledge in these terms, disclosing the truth of communication and pursuing lifelong critical inquiry into the world (Freire, 1970). As Denzin (2009) puts it, speaking of Freire’s praxis-bound ethics in his Pedagogy of Hope: “radical pedagogical formulations” recognize “that hope, like freedom, is an ontological need” (p. 385), intrinsic to humans as moral beings.

Independent Stance

Closely related to truth telling, communication scholars should insist on an independent stance and have an independent soul. Independence of personality, freedom of speech and thought have always been the concern of moral philosophy, and can be coalesced in political economy given its unshakeable commitment to critical thinking.

In the Western world, Max Weber proposed to disenchant the soul, that is, to expel fetishes and doctrines by sweeping the shackles which impede clarity (Klarheit) of the brain, and to renew the academy’s rationale which needs scholarship to be neutral, so that educators can operate with a strict professionalism. As intellectual theorist Gramsci (1971) put it, intellectuals should have an independent soul that orients their whole being in order to be independent of ruling class ideology. “Real democracy, Carey [and others] remind us, comes from the soul. Real democracy is bone deep. It is sutured into the person’s moral fiber” (Denzin, 2009, p. 384).

In China, there is a long tradition of the scholar-bureaucrat conflicting with the powerful forces representing the ruling class. ³ This is called the conflict between the Tao tradition and the political tradition. Xun zi’s obedience to Tao, not the king, is the manifesto of the Tao legacy for resisting political traditions. Since the 1980s, the political atmosphere has become gradually enlightened, but the achievement of freedom of speech for intellectuals is still severely limited. Even nowadays, there is no truly public intellectual from the perspective of Western society. A lot of taboos continue to exist, such as considering Marxism a unitary ideology, the one-party ruling system, and the commitment to the socialist path. There are quite a few media intellectuals who are very popular. A paradigm case is Zhongtian Yi, a university Chinese literature professor who has millions of fans because of his wonderful lectures on CCTV about “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” But he never expresses his political views or talks about public affairs in the media or on the Internet. Popular intellectuals such as Yi have the quality of being a public intellectual, but fail to be because, as their survival strategy, they avoid the forbidden area of politics.

With the conflict between the left and right still intense in China, the public intellectual seeking freedom and justice is always labeled “liberal,” and they are not welcomed by Chinese officials and repressed all the time. It remains difficult for public intellectuals to propose oppositional ideas because freedom of expression and academic freedom are still limited. With new rules of law emerging in China, and with the Internet and other information and computer technology (ICT) providing them with more platforms and channels, public intellectuals will mature to some degree in their views of society and politics, though censorship to date remains rigorous. But bereft of a religious foundation, Chinese society will not produce a spiritual leader, such as Mahatma Gandhi. And the appeals of Weber and Gramsci regarding the soul have no resonance. For a modern public intellectual like Noam Chomsky to arise, the prerequisite is a more openly democratic regime in China, and that possibility seems very distant at present.

The political economy approach always stresses that communication scholars should reflect the modern communication industry independently. In this perspective, the linkages between interests will influence scholars’ action and thinking, and affect the reliability and validity of academic research. In 1949, Dallas Smythe, the founder of the political economy tradition, taught its first course in a not-so-friendly academic environment. It initiated a new field in communication research, though his work was not welcomed by the mainstream. He refused to follow the fashion and fad in academia. He did not use abstruse terminology, formula, and symbols. In fact, he challenged the status quo during his entire lifetime, from free trade to all kinds of doctrines in postmodernism. He was independent and skeptical, never attached to the will of the powerful (Smythe, 1954). Political economists, represented by Smythe, never kowtow to the administrators’ preferences, which makes them marginalized in the university complex.

The power to control scholars is everywhere. As Gramsci puts it, academia is always an intellectual war zone. As a result, it is very necessary for scholars to think independently and freely said Yinke Chen, the famous Chinese intellectual. That means for today, do not attach to any authority, especially in the age when liberal pluralism is sweeping the globe. With neoliberalism becoming the new gospel, it becomes more and more important to insist on a critical approach for keeping an independent position. Political economy has a special contribution to make here, focusing as it does in the age of global neoliberalism on media reform. McChesney and Nichols (2010), for example, argue that neoliberal arguments for deregulation are fundamentally at odds with the freedom of the press, and outline strategies for releasing the media from a neoliberal straitjacket. Downing (2000) has focused a lifetime of research on the possibilities for radical media worldwide. Media reform in the face of neoliberalism’s free market capialism is one evidence of political economy’s ongoing and active resistance to the control of established power.

Political economy challenges scholars to be as independent as possible from existing institutions and from institutional loyalties that would interfere with their independence. They are called to make decisive judgments unaffected by careers, follow protocol that requires boldness, even an anarchist suspicion of experts and officials. But communication scholars betray their mission if they involve themselves with political passions only and cheapen their scholarship. Intellectuals and activists should try to use their function to develop knowledge, that is, to make explicit the implicit, to understand reality, to identify the shortcomings of the terms they read and the practices they observe, and denounce them loudly when necessary (Bettignies, 1976).

Left-Wing Critical Approach

The philosopher Kant alleges that everything should be subject to criticism. Criticism is not merely characteristic of individuals or an epoch, but the basic essence of being human. In Kant, agnosticism is not an excuse for avoiding responsibility; on the contrary, it is the premise of assuming responsibility. As scholars and intellectuals, communication educators should be skeptical about existing knowledge and the world. In that sense, political economists are in a left-wing critical stance at all times. From the founders Smythe and Schiller to today, they criticize and question the existing communication system as their theoretical posture from beginning to end. Smythe was deeply influenced by radical thinking, such as Marxist institutional economics, and he participated actively in different kinds of labor movements. Even when working for the U.S. government, he focused on social justice and public interests. After beginning his academic career, he didn’t change his critical stance. In his late years, he used the term “counterclockwise” to describe his life course, implying a left-oriented life route contrary to the mainstream (Smythe, 1994).

Schiller was marginalized in the university for a long time. He was unable to get funding for research, as he criticized fiercely the military-communication-culture-education complex and cultural imperialism in postwar America. Schiller was a tireless correspondent, a political activist, and public intellectual on an international scale. In Edward Herman’s words, he was the most original and influential media analyst of the left in the past half century (Maxwell, 2003, preface). The left is always denounced by liberalism, but the political economy tradition claims that the left should be the leading force in media reform. In its view, even under the best of circumstances, capitalism in which seeking profit is the basic rule innately conflicts with the core tenets of democracy (McChesney, 1999, 285). For political economy, the only hope of media reform is the raising of powerful left-wing movements. It hopes workers will organize under the left’s guidance, carry out social movements, fight the communications status quo, and create a healthy and dynamic journalism.

Schiller understood that “it is not enough to understand any given reality” (Denzin, 2009, p. 381). “There is a need to transform it with the goal of radically democratizing educational sites and societies” (Denzin, 2009, p. 381; quoting Fischman & McLaren, 2005, p. 1). “Educators, as transformative intellectuals, actively shape and lead this project” (Denzin, 2009, p. 381).

Political economy challenges communication scholars to join it on a left-wing critical approach, promoting critical self-reflection at the level of moral values, persisting skeptically about existing knowledge, criticizing the powerful class, and refusing to accept the conception that the status quo is the most natural and best. In this way, political economists support critical pedagogy in providing “the tools for understanding how cultural and educational practices contribute to the construction of neo-liberal conceptions of identity, citizenship, and agency” (Denzin, 2009, p. 381).

Critical scholars should see their work as premised on rejecting the notion that whatever exists means it is natural and good. They begin with a set of values and working assumptions and proceed to make what Karl Marx famously termed “a ruthless criticism of all things existing, ruthless in two senses: that it is not afraid of its own conclusions nor of conflict with the powers that be.” The range of inquiry for a critical scholar is not bounded by the needs of those who rule society, who benefit by the status quo, but by the range of what is determined to be socially possible. Almost by definition, then, critical scholarship will be in a tenuous position in a university or society at large (McChesney, 2007, p. 41). But communication cannot in good conscience live in degradation, letting the society fall into insanity. Communication scholars as left-wing intellectuals can gain respect only by fighting with intelligence and consistency.

Realistic Epistemology

Communication research is the kind of scholarship that focuses on real communication activity. It inquires about communication behavior and processes, probes into the relation between communications and society. Therefore, it should persist in realistic epistemology, in caring for the tendencies of reality. In the political economy tradition, although they do research on the essence of communication—in its ontology and metaphysics—they are not interested in a visionary paradise. The first generation of political economists of communication, growing up in the Great Depression, had a deep feeling about class division. In their later academic careers, they went through a world war, anticommunism, the cold war, new colonialism, cultural imperialism, and the national independence movement one after another. They carried out their political economy research in the midst of profoundly troubling experiences.

They paid attention to the influence of the communication industry on human society from a different perspective. Political economy is the study of social relations, particularly the power relations that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources (Mosco,1996, p. 25). Political economy supports the critical pedagogy project in holding “systems of authority accountable through the critical reading of texts, the creation of radical educational practices, and the promotion of critical literacy” (Denzin, 2009, p. 381, summarizing Giroux & Giroux, 2005, p. 2). Political economy addresses the complexity and contestation of social control and survival. Political economy has traditionally given priority to understanding social change and historical transformation. It is important to avoid the essentialism of communication.

The political economy of communication has sought to decenter the media, in the sense that media systems of communication are seen as integral to fundamental economic, political, social and cultural processes. They start from a realist, inclusive, and critical epistemology, and then take an ontological stance regarding the ubiquity of social change. The political economists’ general interest is placing social process and social relations in the foreground of research. Their methodology and epistemology represent critical, holistic historical materialism; they understand the role of communication in modern society from the point-of-view of Giddens’ social complexity and Foucault’s punish and discipline. Communication scholars should adopt a realistic approach, facing-up to the media’s imperatives, abandoning an idealized imagination, and observing the appearance of the communication world in detail.

Criticism With Suggestions

The appeal of seeking truth means inevitably that the status quo is criticized, but the creation of knowledge does not end here. Discovering and telling the truth contributes to our understanding of the world, but criticism without a pathway for reform causes mental stagnation. The criticism of communications phenomena must be responsible criticism. When positive suggestions are made for improving democracy, knowledge is added to criticism.

In the political economy tradition, political economists have committed themselves to provide a “knowledge force” for social reform. They create intellectually robust cultural resources for individuals and the population as a whole. Different from most critical scholars who deconstruct without proposing, who only pay attention to analyzing the status quo, political economists contribute to the radical education project by raising different kinds of media reform strategies. They are the most powerful proponents of democratization and the public discussion of global media governance. On the strategy level, political economists of communication give the strongest support to constructing a reasonable and equitable international communication order. They make it clear that transnational companies have intensified inequalities in global expansion. But they also make suggestions for constructing a new information and communication order.

Dallas Smythe used his economist qualifications to not only criticize the structure and policy of American electronic communication, but also to argue for increasing public control. He scoffed at the claim that markets could handle the complex task of coordinating airwave usage. Robert McChesney, the most radical representative of political economy, always stresses that scholarship in the social sciences can be strengthened by being connected to real-life social movements and political affairs (McChesney, 2007, 2008). The political economy of communication, as a subject paying close attention to reality and reacting to it actively, takes a constructive role by constantly participating in current political and social affairs, insisting on increasing the public discussion in policy making, raising public service, and reinforcing public control. Its critical view does not end with a description or even an explanation of existing reality. A precondition of its research is that it should both advance criticism of the existing world system and promote the propositions that would transform it.

Political economy, by theory and practice, goes beyond lip service to demonstrate that communication scholars are not only knowledge producers, but ought to be constructors of the social conscience. When critically analyzing the current communications order, they assume responsibility for using communication scholarship and diverse methodology to explain the problems society is facing. In their perspective, if communication scholars just repeatedly describe the world of media organizations and technology, they are not acting responsibly as intellectuals. In other words, communication scholars need to describe the stereotypes in our society, especially hostile stereotypes, but in addition to keeping them from spreading, they have a responsibility to correct them (Berger, 1957). In its radical critical pedagogy, communications research is a kind of social praxis. Not just in concluding paragraphs, but from research design to publication follow-up, political economy communication scholars develop practical policies and instruments that can be used in the transformation of sociopolitical structures. They throw themselves into the construction of policy making for public broadcasting and for the new world information and communication order.

Transcending Academics

Transcending academics is another kind of responsibility of communication scholars. Marx said that philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it. Political economy, following this Marxist world-changing goal of social reform, views knowledge as not only a process of conceptual abstraction, but also a mutual construction of theory and practice. For political economy, the ultimate goal of theory is changing the world by making social ideas come true. Communication scholars have the responsibility of using organized intelligence and social experience to coordinate and solve social conflicts. The goal of academic praxis in the political economy tradition is to challenge unequal social power relations, deepen democracy, and increase the liberation of human beings. The political economy of communication uses the conceptions of democracy, civil rights, and social justice as their ideal value goals. They seek to interfere in social development, to facilitate and democratize communication policy making through active participation. They want the core values that political economy advocates to become policy issues and to be implemented.

Political economy also becomes involved in social communication in a nongovernmental way. It participates in the social labor movement and the communication activities of nongovernmental organizations to advance media activism. The political economy tradition never lacks exemplars of active participation. Since the days of its intellectual origins, the political economy of communication has demonstrated a commitment to democratic participation in the modern industrial world in order to promote the harmonious development of society. All generations of political economists since Smythe and Schiller have participated actively in media reform movements, and Robert McChesney today makes them his specialty.

Political economy speaks from experience when it insists that communication scholars should play an important role in facilitating democratic politics. Only in this way can communication research revive and gain respect. In political economy terms, communication scholars should not only react to the historical context and provide a critical reading that combines historical and current analysis, but they should figure out how to advance public interest on the issues. For media reform to be successful, in the final analysis, it will take more than the participation of academics. It will require a broad “politicization” of society and a massive increase in popular politics (McChesney, 2007, p. 220). In his view, “capitalism is turning the internet against democracy,” and only a revolution in America’s “brain-dead commercialism and rampant militarism” can reform this digital enterprise (McChesney, 2013, pp. x-xi). ⁴

In strategizing for media reform, citizens play an active role by forming pressure groups, increasing the awareness of the audience is emphasized, and the best interests of the audience as consumers and producers are made paramount. It is the democratization of media policy making, the democratization of politics in general, that can improve the impact of communications, advance personal autonomy, and encourage the free and equal flow of information.

Responsibility of Teaching

For teachers in higher education, political economy contends that on the premise of academic freedom, communication scholars have teaching responsibilities. It supports the mandate of critical pedagogy that teachers should develop students’ cognition in social and political responsibility. It means, among other things, that teachers should help students abandon outdated taboos and deconstruct their worship of the canon. Teaching responsibility could be summarized this way: communication scholars as teachers should provide methods of thinking and tools of reflection to direct students’ lives and action.

The boundaries of communication research are disputed, and there are controversies among different approaches inside this field. So teaching styles and content need sufficient finesse to tolerate opposing positions while persisting in one’s own beliefs. Students graduating from communication departments usually work in the communications industry, and communication technologies pervade every corner of social life. Therefore, instead of focusing on media careers per se, students in college need to be equipped for responsible social action whether they work in electronic broadcasting, Internet communication, the public relations industry or book publishing.

The political economy approach points out the shortcomings of instruction in the communication departments in America. In its view, American media research has the “professional-expert” orientation of its practitioners, rather than pursuing research questions of demonstrable social or conceptual value. Very little has been done, for example, to examine the ability of sources to influence the content of information flows (Gandy, 1982, preface). Political economists criticize mainstream researchers for not pursuing interesting questions with innovative and challenging methodological tools, but, in effect, following computer output wherever it leads.

Herbert Schiller did not disconnect intellect and politics. He never detached himself from the wider world of historical events and he never capitulated to administrators’ preferences. Schiller grew up during the Great Depression; he experienced class stratification, World War II and its aftermath in cold war anticommunism, neocolonialism, cultural imperialism, and anti-imperialist struggles. Schiller found that most students major in communications and media studies as a way of getting into business, not to learn how to change it. He encouraged his students to question the current state of world affairs while making a career for themselves, and to learn more about what it takes to read and write from outside the mainstream. He inspired students to think critically and speak against the injustices of the established order.

Exemplars such as Schiller contend that communication scholars as teachers must always adhere to a higher code of ethics than is ordinarily required of those who work in other areas of human endeavor (Cherrington, 1954). They should insist on high moral norms, making every effort to improve students’ level of cognition in communications and increase their ability to act on this cognition. In fact, political economy recognizes that two kinds of service are typically attributed to communication scholars as teachers, and ethics is central to them both (Christians, 2011). On one level, there is the direct help that they give their students; if they are successful, they guide them to clearer thinking and enhanced autonomy. The second kind of service is enhancing the strategic reasoning of students, and in that way indirectly contributing to the battle against injustice and suffering (Jenni, 2001).

Expressive Style

Compared to other subjects, communications research is peculiar. Although there is such a thing as one-way communication, communication can be perceived better as a two-way process in which there is an exchange and progression of thoughts, feelings and ideas. As with teaching, the process and outcome of communication research must be understood in two-way terms. In Stuart Hall’s analysis, the requirement of all scholarship, especially for communication research, is its ease in decoding. If the process and production of communication research cannot be communicated to audiences very well, then this discipline loses its rationality.

The way of producing knowledge is important, but how research is presented is especially crucial. In the political economy tradition, readability and plain writing are the styles of almost everyone. Smythe and Schiller were both PhD’s in Economics, but there were no symbols, statistics, or equations in their work. They were scholars in ivory towers, masters in specialty fields, but they were also public intellectuals, writing and speaking to ordinary people at the same time. Neither in commentary articles nor in academic work do they use abstruse terminology or mathematical formulas.

For linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky, his criticism presented to the media and his writing style deeply influence both media studies and public life. Robert McChesney (2009) takes Chomsky as his example. In the 2009 ICA conference, he said, Chomsky, as an outstanding linguist, knows many more words than most people, but he never uses difficult prose in his works or media criticism, as exhibited by Manufacturing of Consent coauthored with Edward Herman (2002).

This style of easy-reading and understanding makes their work influential in academia and industry, and at the same time with a big audience of everyday citizens. In writing and speaking, political economy challenges communication scholars to convince the public and policy makers in this different way, adopting effective communication strategies to get the best effect.

Conclusion

For Confucius, scholar-bureaucrats should consider Tao perspectives, not individual interests. Weber said the academic vocation needs inspiration and clarity of mind. And, of course, the academic vocation requires responsibility. Communication research, as knowledge creation through analyzing real communications, will confront different kinds of temptation. Impediments are inevitable when fighting with commercial organizations and political power. A sense of responsibility is required to conquer apathy; taking responsibility is the origin of passion. Communication scholars should possess astonishing knowledgeability and profundity to cultivate social standards and create intellectual products. In political economic terms, when academics influence society, they are demonstrating the responsibility that inheres in intellectual life. The world is wracked by injustice, threatened with nuclear devastation, and hastening toward environmental disaster. In facing crises such as these, communication scholars need to consider how to lead the nation and public out of it. Political economy is dedicated to the project of radical critical pedagogy, calling communication scholars to improve and act on the arrangements human beings have so far devised to transform their social relations.

While this article has demonstrated that political economy from its origins has contributed substantially in its activism to our understanding of critical pedagogy, its work is not complete. Contrary to the empirical tradition with nothing to offer, the political economy tradition has made the social responsibility of educators inescapable. The challenge for the days ahead is developing this contribution further in two directions: toward substantive educational reform and deeper engagement with democracy.

Political economy insists on a distinctive pedagogy. Its influential founders, Dallas Smythe and Herbert Schiller, were at strident odds with the academy, and throughout its history the tradition has protested education’s commitment to technical, functional instruction and research. But Giroux (2011) has developed critical pedagogy into a comprehensive critique of the higher education complex, its technocratic structures and antidemocratic policies, and provides trajectories for reform and revolution. Political economy has favored communication research and scholarship in its critique, and needs to widen its scope to insure that its involvement in the critical pedagogy project will be distinctive and sophisticated.

Denzin (2009, 2010) has integrated performance ethnography and Carey’s (1989) cultural approach into a complex understanding of critical pedagogy and democratic society. In like manner, the political economy perspective, in terms of its very rationale and character, puts the responsibilities of scholars in terms of public life as a whole. But refinements and advances here are necessary. Race, gender, ethnicity, class are crucial vectors in Denzin’s (2009) radical pedagogy, and political economy’s general commitment beyond class to these issues of democratic life needs to be made more explicit. Angharad Valdivia (1995, 2010) is leading the way here, through her work in communications research on the tensions between agency and structure in gender studies, ethnicity, and hybridity theory as it applies to Latina/o Studies specifically and to transnationalism generally.

In both of these challenges toward comprehensiveness and depth, political economy has the advantage of working from the inside out. Rather than artifice and overreaching, for educational institutions and democratic transformation political economy understands its task and knows how to move forward with urgency.