Media power, ideology

and markets

The essays in this section either offer general critiques of the field (Curran and
Couldry) or focus on what we would regard as under-developed areas within it
(Davis and Magder). James Curran offers a historical account of the development
of media and cultural theory in Britain. His central argument is that this develop-
ment needs to be understood in relation to wider social and political change,
rather than exclusively as a set of internally evolving ideas.This approach encour-
ages a greater distance of perspective, which registers losses as well as gains in the
evolution of the field. The ascendancy of neo-liberal thought during the last two
decades has contributed, in his view, to an increasing reluctance to examine criti-
cally the distorting role of media markets, to engage with issues of class inequality,
or to adequately acknowledge the negative aspects of globalisation.
Aeron Davis turns the spotlight on an over-theorised and under-researched
area: the promotional industries (advertising, marketing and public relations).
There are, he argues, four contending positions. Enthusiasts see promotion as a
neutral mechanism that harmonises supply and demand, and facilitates communi-
cation and reciprocity. Critics see promotion as a tool used mainly by the
powerful to increase their control, as a source of media corruption, and as an
integral part of a consumerist culture that thrives on unfulfillable dreams and
leads ultimately to personal dissatisfaction. Sceptics question whether promotion
has the power and influence attributed to it by enthusiasts and critics alike, and
stress the ability of both media staff and audiences to withstand promotional pres-
sures. A fourth position (overlapping with the first) sees promotion as a
constitutive part of postmodernity, and in some cases argues that it is part of a
process that empowers citizen-consumers. Davis concludes by attempting a crit-
ical synthesis of these different perspectives.
Ted Magder takes us on a guided tour of an important and neglected area.
While debates about public service broadcasting, media subsidies and the free
market in a national setting are familiar to most media students (in Europe, at
least), surprisingly little attention has been given to the principles and practice of
international regulation of the media.Yet international regulation of communica-
 Media power, ideology and markets

tions dates back to the nineteenth century. It is becoming increasingly important

as a consequence of intensified globalisation, and the pressure exerted by the
world's sole superpower in favour of unrestricted cross-border flows of commu-
nication, and against national media subsidies. Magder provides a clear account of
the competing principles and concerns - from technical standardisation to secu-
rity, freedom of expression to diversity - which inform international regulation,
and describes new demands that are currently being pressed. He also explains a
Byzantine universe in which some international regulations are binding and
others are not, and some are irrevocable and others are negotiable.
Nick Couldry argues that we should stand outside the conventional framework
of media studies.The standard approach in our field, he argues, tends to focus on
large-scale media, on the unargued assumption that these matter most. This
assumption is sustained, according to Couldry, by three `road-blocks': fashionable
theorising about media spectacle, a pervasive and largely unacknowledged func-
tionalism that relates the media to an imagined `whole', and, above all, an
involuntary `media-centrism' that is manifested in a focus on television rather
than the press, and on national rather than local, and on mainstream rather than
alternative media. What is needed, he argues, is a new orientation in which what
is important is investigated from the perspective of people's lives, in terms of
what makes for a good or bad life, what opens up or closes down options, what
contributes to knowledge and how this is used.This perspective, he hopes, will be
better able to generate a new mapping of the role of a variety of media in our
lives - a mapping informed by research rather than habitual assumption.