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The author offers an analysis of the central concerns of the political economy of communications, identifying three broad policy areas: production policy, allocation policy and policy on capital, organization and control. For the final area, a summary historical analysis is presented.

Over the last decade, political economy has grown rapidly as a specialist area of research and teaching within communications and media studies and is now established as a core element in university programmes around the world. The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications offers students and scholars a comprehensive, authoritative, up-to-date and accessible overview of key areas and debates. Combines overviews of core ideas with new case study materials and the best of contemporary theorization and researchWritten many of the best known authors in the fieldInclude

First published in 1990, The Political Economy of Communications explores the central theme of the relationship between politics and markets in policy development. The contributors show how governments have been drawn into increasing interdependency by technological and market developments, with international institutions like the European Community becoming more important in these policy areas. They argue that neither government ideologies nor market and technological forces offer an adequate account of the processes of change in communications policy. These conclusions lead to a critique of central theories of international political economy, notably neo-liberalism, and the authors advocate instead a neo-pluralist perspective for the study of political economy of communications - an approach that takes institutions much more seriously as a central unit of analysis. The book will be of interest to students of international relations, European studies, and media and telecommunication studies, as well as to political scientists and economists concerned with public policy.

PurposeThere is a need to understand both theoretically and empirically the dominant guiding principles that are becoming embedded in people's technologically mediated interactions and what the alternatives may be. Aims to provide an evaluation of the work of Rob Kling in helping to find guidance on these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe paper combines narrative with argument and analysis.FindingsHow people communicate in different organisational contexts is informed by the way meanings are created (in this study, contractual understandings to supply material goods) and how various processes can be made to work in both offline and online environments. The results of this study illustrate one of Rob Kling's dictums: the social context of information and communication technologies (ICT) development matters.Originality/valueProvides a contribution to the literature on Kling's work on social informatics.

Abstract
If we take the late 1960s as a starting point, an explicitly defined 'critical political economy of communications' is nearly 50 years old. How salient today are the core concerns that shaped this tradition? What are the emergent themes in contemporary critical media studies? While critical political economy's attention to the way media industries are organized and financed has become a more central consideration across the field of media and communication studies, this mainstreaming has been accompanied by disconnection from the critical political economy tradition. Reviewing that paradox, the article identifies emergent research themes and argues for the relevance of critical political economy approaches for contemporary investigations into the problems of the media.

The political economy of communication encompasses a broad body of literature that explores linkages between mass communication media and power brokers or 'elites' at a societal level (Boyd-Barrett and Newbold, 1995; Chomsky, 1996; Downing et al., 1995; Golding and Murdock, 1996; Herman et al., 1998; Keeble, 2000; Kellner, 2001; Mc Chesney and Wood, 998; Mosco, 1996; Schiller, 1992). The literature focuses on a number of key power brokers within society such as the legislature, judiciary and a wide variety of powerful state agencies, including the armed forces, that would seek in their interactions with media organisations to regulate, control and direct public communication.