Political Economy Communication

1. Historical materialists
2. blindspot

   Anmerkungen:

   •    The mass media of communications and related institutions concerned with advertising, market research, public relations and product and package blind spot and consciousness industry:   
   1. Institutions perspective

      Anmerkungen:

      •    1design represent a blindspot in Marxist theory in the European and Atlantic basin cultures. The activities of these institutions are intimately connected with consumer consciousness, needs, leisure time use, commodity fetishism, work and alienation.     
      1. Consciousness industry

         Anmerkungen:

         • As we will see, when these institutions are examined from a materialist point of view, the labour theory of value, the expenses of circulation, the value of the "peculiar commodity" (labour power), the form of the proletariat and the class struggle under monopoly capitalist conditions are also deeply involved. The literature of Marxism is conspicuously lacking in materialist analysis of the functions of the complex of institutions called the "consciousness industry".
         1. The power of advertising

            Anmerkungen:

            • There the rise to ascendancy of advertising in dominating the policy of newspapers and periodicals was delayed by custom and by law. 
         2. communication as commodity

            Anmerkungen:

            •    The bourgeois idealist view of the reality of the communication commodity is "messages," "information," "images," "meaning," "entertainment," "orientation," "education," and "manipulation." All of these concepts are subjective mental entities and all deal with superficial appearances.   
         3. state power

            Anmerkungen:

            •    Even in the radio-TV broadcast media, the role of the state has been resistant to the inroads of monopoly capitalism-as compared with the United States and Canada. But the evidence accumulates that such traditional resistance is giving way under the onslaught to pressures from the centre of the monopoly capitalist system.   
3. audience commodity
   1. audience and readership

      Anmerkungen:

      • I submit that the materialist answer to the question-What is the commodity form of mass-produced, advertiser-supported communications under monopoly capitalism?-is audiences and readerships (hereafier referred to for simplicity as audiences). The material reality under monopoly capitalism is that all non-sleeping time of most of the population is work time. This work time is devoted to the production of commodities-in-general (both where people get paid for their work and as members of audiences) and in the production and reproductions of labour power (the pay for which is sub- sumed in their income). Of the off-the-job work time, the largest single block is time of the audiences which is sold to advertisers. It is not sold by workers but by the mass media of communications. 
      1. insitution as providers

         Anmerkungen:

         •  The mass media of communications do by the mix of explicit and hidden advertising and "programme" material, the markets for which preoccupy the bourgeois communications theorists. But although the mass media play the leading role on the production side of the consciousness industry, the people in the audiences pay directly much more for the privilege of being in those audiences than do the mass media.
         1. superstructure

            Anmerkungen:

            •    among them is the apparent fact that while the superstructure is not ordinarily thought of as being itself engaged in infrastructural productive activity, the mass media of communications are simultaneously in the superstructure and engaged indispensably in the last stage of infrastructural production where demand is produced and satisfied by purchases of consumer goods.     
         2. producers and resouces

            Anmerkungen:

            • what institutions produce the commodity? which advertiers buy with their advertising expenditures? the owners of tv and radio stationsn and networks,newspapers,magazines which specialize in providing billboard and third class advertising are the principal producers. the array of producers is interlocked in many ways with advertising agencies,talent agencies,films producers. Last but by no means in the array of instiutions which produce the audience commodity is the family. The most important resource employed in producing the audience commoidty are the inidividuals and families in the nations which permit adverstising. 
      2. audience
         1. audience contradiction

            Anmerkungen:

            •  :In "their" time which is sold to advertisers workers (a) perform essential marketing functions for the producers of consumers' goods, and (b) work at the production and reproduction of labour power, This joint process, as shall be noted, embodies a principal contradiction.
         2. specialized audience

            Anmerkungen:

            •    What do advertisers buy with their advertising expenditures? As hard-nosed businessmen they are not paying for advertising for nothing, nor from altruism. I suggest that what they buy are the services of audiences with predictable specifications who which pay attention in predictable numbers and at particular times to particular means of communication. As collectivities these audiences are commodities. As commodities they are dealt with in markets by producers and buyers (the latter being advertisers). Such markets establish prices in the familiar mode of monopoly capitalism. Both these markets and the audience commodities traded in are specialized.   
            1. demographics

               Anmerkungen:

               •    bear specifications known in the business as "the demographics." The specifications for the audience commodities include age, sex, income level, family composition, urban or rural locations.   
         3. specialized content

            Anmerkungen:

            •    How are advertisers assured that they are getting what they pay for when they buy audiences? A sub-industry sector of the consciousness industry checks to determine. The socio-economic characteristics of the delivered audiences/readership and its size are the business of A.C. Nielsen and a host of competitors who specialize in rapid assessment of the delivered audience commodity. The behaviour of the members of the audience product under the impact of advertising and the "editorial" content is the object of market research by a large number of independent market research agencies as well as by similar staffs located in advertising agencies, the advertising corporation and in media enterprises.   
   2. free lunch
      1. incument

         Anmerkungen:

         • What is the nature of the content of the mass media in economic terms under monopoly capitalism? The information, entertainment and "educational" material transmitted to the audience is an inducement (gift, bribe or "free lunch") to recruit potential members of the audience and to maintain their loyal attentiom.
         1. mechanism

            Anmerkungen:

            •    The appropriateness of the analogy to the free lunch in the old-time saloon or cocktail bar is manifest: the free lunch consists of materials which whet the prospective audience members' appetites and thus (1) attract and keep them attending to the programme, newspaper or magazine, and (2) cultivate a mood conducive to favorable reaction to the explicit and implicit advertisers' messages. To say this is not to obscure the agenda-setting function of the "editorial" content and advertising for the populations which depend on the mass media to find out what is happening in the world, nor is it to denigrate the technical virtuosity with which the free lunch is prepared and served.   Under monopoly capitalism TV-radio programs are provided "free" and the newspapers and magazines, are provided at prices which cover delivery (but not production) costs to the media enterprise.   
            1. nature

               Anmerkungen:

               •    What is the nature of the service performed for the advertiser by the members of the purchased audience? In economic terms, the audience commodity is a non-durable producers' good which is bought and used in the marketing of the advertiser's product. The work which audience members perform for the advertisers to whom they have been sold is to learn to buy particular "brands" of consumer goods, and to spend their income accordingly.   In short, they work to create the demand for advertised goods which is the purpose of the monopoly capitalist advertisers. While doing this, audience members are simultaneously reproducing their own labor power, that when workers under monopoly capitalist conditions serve advertisers to complete the production process of consumer goods by performing the ultimate marketing service for them, these workers are making decisive material decision which will affect how they will produce and reproduce their labor power.   
            2. attention

               Anmerkungen:

               •    Regardless of these variations, the central purpose of the information, entertainment and educational" material (including that in the advertisements themselves transmitted to the audience is to ensure attention to the products and services being advertised.     
   3. labor power

      Anmerkungen:

      • Marx assumed that labour power is produced by the labourer and by his or her immediate family, i.e., under the conditions of handicraft production. In a word. labour power was "home-made" in the absence of dominant brand- name commodities, mass advertising, and the mass media (which had not yet been invented by monopoly capitalism). 
      1. marx'salienation

         Anmerkungen:

         • In Marx's period and in his analysis, the principal aspect of capitalist production was the alienation of workers from the means of producing commodities-in-general. Now the principal aspect of capitalist production has become the alienation of workers from the means of producing and reproducing themselves. 
      2. media and consupmtion

         Anmerkungen:

         •    the mass media of communications and advertising play a large and probably dominant role through the process of consumption (by guiding the making of the shopping list) as well as through the ideological teaching which permeates both the advertising and ostensibly non-advertising material with which they produce the audience commodity.   
      3. free time and leisure time

         Anmerkungen:

         •    Capitalist-apologists equated this ostensible reduction in work time a corresponding increase in "free" or "leisure" time.. Two transformations were being effected by monopoly capitalism in the nature of work, leisure and consumer behavior.   On the one hand, huge chunks of workers' time were being removed from their discretion by the phenomenon of metropolitan sprawl and by the nature of unpaid work which workers were obligated to perform. 交通 第二志愿 维修 free" as a result of capitalist industrialization is thus anything but "free".   The second transformation involves the pressure placed by the system on the remaining hours of the.Guiding the worker today in all income and time expenditures are the mass media-through the blend of advertisements and programme content. the purpose is to provide 'fun', srelaxation', a 'good time'-in short, passively absorbable amusement.   
      4. social class and commodity

         Anmerkungen:

         •    (1)    the existence of a "problem" facing the worker (acne, security from burglars, sleeplessness), (2)    the existence of a class of commodities which will solve that problem, and (3) the motivation to give to priority to purchasing brand X of that class of commodities in order to "solve" that 'problem'. The ever-increasing number of decisions forced on him/her by 'new' commodities and by their related   
   4. demand management

      Anmerkungen:

      •    If we recognize the reality of monopoly capitalism buying audiences to complete the mass marketing of mass-produced consumer goods and services much further analysis is needed of the implications of this "principal and decisive" integration of superstructure and base which reality presents.   
      1. impulse purchasing

         Anmerkungen:

         •    Monopoly capitalist marketing practice has a sort of seismic, systemic drift towards "impulse purchasing." Increasingly, the work done by audience members is cued towards impulse purchasing. a. The advertiser helps to close the information gap. at the same time exploiting the information gap that is bound to remain. b. Brand loyalty must be built up among people who have no possibility of deciding how to act on objective grounds. c. As routine purchasing procedure gain in importance as a means of reducing decision-making time, it will become increasingly important to capture those who have not yet developed their routines.   
      2. consumption

         Anmerkungen:

         •     production, which is its presupposition. Consumption creates the motive for production; it also creates the object which is active in production as its determinant aim... No production without a need. But consumption reproduces the need... Consumption likewise produces the producer's inclination by beckoning to him as an aim-determined need.   
      3. production

         Anmerkungen:

         • produces consumption (1) by creating the material for it; C2) by determining the manner of consumption; and (3) by creating the products initially posited by it as objects, in the form of a need felt by the consumer. It thus produces the object of consumption, the manner of consumption and the motive of consumption. 
      4. ailenation and audience commodity

         Anmerkungen:

         •    I think that the consciousness industry through advertising-supported mass media produces three kinds of alienation for the members of the audience commodity: (1) alienation from the result of their work "on the job"; (2) alienation from the commodities-in-general which they participate in marketing to themselves; (3) alienation from the labor power they produce and reproduce in themselves and their children.   
      5. reality and real world

         Anmerkungen:

         •    the society of the spectacle, cannot be abstractly contrasted with the 'real' world of actual people and things. the two interact. But because the society of the spectacle is a system which stands the world really on its head, the truth in it is a moment of the false. Because the spectacle monopolizes the power to make mass appearance, it demands and gets passive acceptance by the "real" world. And because it is undeniably real as well as false it has the persuasive power of the most effective propaganda.   

Anmerkungen:

•    Political economy is the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication resources.   

1. deep undersanding

   Anmerkungen:

   •    Control and survive: A more general and ambitious definition of political economy is the study of control and survival in social life. "Control" refers specifically to the internal organization of social group members and the process of adapting to change. "Survival" means how people produce what is needed for social reproduction and continuity. Control processes are broadly political, In that they constitute the social organization of relationships within a community, and survival processes are mainly economic, because they concern processes of production and reproduction.   
2. marxism perspective

   Anmerkungen:

   •    Political economy has consistently placed in the foreground the goal of understanding social change and historical transformation.   Marxism political economy: it meant examing the dynamic forces within capitalism and the relationship between capitalism and other forms of political economic organization, in order to understand the processes of social change that would, he contended, ultimately lead from capitalism to socialism.   
3. neo-marxism

   Anmerkungen:

   •    neo-marxian theorists, political economy has consistently aimed to build on the unity of the political and the economic by accounting for their mutual influence and for their relationship to wider social and symbolic spheres of activity. The political economist asks: How are power and wealth related? How do these influence our systems of mass media, information,  and  entertainment?   
   1. class struggle

      Anmerkungen:

      •     A second stream of research foregrounds class struggle and is most prominent in the work of Armand Mattelart (2 000; Mattelart & Siegelaub 1983). Mattelart has drawn from a range of traditions including dependency theory, western Marxism, and the worldwide experience of national liberation movements to understand communication as one among the principal sources of resistance to power. used the mass media to oppose western control and create indigenous news and entertainment media(development communication)   
4. mroal philosophical

   Anmerkungen:

   •    Contemporary political economy tends to favor moral philosophical standpoints that promote the extension of democracy to all aspects of social life. This goes beyond the political realm, which guarantees rights to participate In government, to the economic, social, and cultural domains. where supporters of democracy call for income equality, access to education, and full public participation in cultural production and a guarantee of the right to communicate freely.   
5. social praxis

   Anmerkungen:

   • Following from this view, sociai oraxis, or the fundamental unity of thinking and doing, also occupies central place in political economy. Specifically, against traditional academic positions which separate the sphere of research from that of social intervention, political economists, in a tradition tracing its roots to ancient practices of providing advice and counsel to leaders, have consistently viewed intellectual life as a form of social transformation and social intervention as a form of knowledge. Although they differ fundamentally on what should characterize intervention from Thomas Malthus who supported open sewers as a form of population control, to Marx, who called on labor to realize itself in revolution, political economists are united In the view that the division between research and action is artificial and must be overturned.
6. two factions

   Anmerkungen:

   •    Their approach to communication studies drew on both the institutional and Marxian traditions. A concern about the growing size and power of transnational communication businesses places them squarely in the institutional school, but their interest in social class and in media imperialism gives their work a definite Marxian focus (- (globalization of the Media; Media Conglomerates).   a major objective of this work is to  advance - public interest concerns before government regulatory and policy organs. This includes support for movements that have taken an active role before international organizations: in defense of a new international economic, information, and communication order (Mosco & Schiller 2001).   
7. European school

   Anmerkungen:

   •     in the work of (Garnham (2000) and of Murdock & Golding (2000), has emphasized class over. Building on the Frankfurt School tradition, as well as on the work of Raymond Williams, it documents the integration of communication institutions, mainly business and state policy authorities, within the wider capitalist economy, and the resistance of subaltern classes and movements reflected mainly in opposition to neo-conservative state practices promoting liberalization, commercialization, and privatization of the communication industries.   
8. third world and PEC

   Anmerkungen:

   •     including world systems and dependency theory, third world political economists challenged the fundamental premises of the developmentalist model, particularly its tech monological determinism and the amission of 'practically any interest in the power relations that shape the terms of relationships between first and third world nations and the multilayered class relations between and within them (Zhao 1998; Pendakur 2003).   
   1. international division

      Anmerkungen:

      •  more recent research acknowledges that class division of labor is the growth in territorial lines and maintains that what is central to the evolving international division of labor is the growth in flexibility for firms that control the range of technologies that overcome traditional time and space constraints.
9. commodification

   Anmerkungen:

   •    1Commodificatlon has long been understood as the process of taking goods and services that are valued for their use. The process of commodification holds a dual significance for communication research.   2 communication practices and technologies contribute to the general commdification throught society, computer not influence communication companies, but over the entire process of production, distribution, and exchange, permitting retailers to monitor sales and inventory levels with ever greater precision.   3commodification is an entry point to understand specific communication institutions and practices. for example ,the privatization of one public media and telecommunications institutions.   
   1. instiutional PEC

      Anmerkungen:

      •    The political economy of communication has been notable for its emphasis on describing' and examining the significance of institutions, especially business and governments, responsible for the production, distribution,and exchange of communication commodities and the regulation of communication marketplace.   political economy has tended to concentrate on media content and less on media audiences and the labor involved in media production. the emphasis on media structures and content is understandable in light of the importance of global media companies and the growth in value of media content.   
      1. instiution and labor

         Anmerkungen:

         •    in order to cut the labor bill an expand revenue, managers replaced mechanical with electronic systems to eliminate thousands of jobs in the printing industry as electronic typesetting did away with the jobs of linotype operators . companies not sell software well before it has been debugged on the understanding that customers will report errors, download and install updates, and figure out how to work around problems, This ability to eliminate labor, combine it to perform multiple tasks, and shift labor to unpaid consumers further expands the revenue potential.   
   2. audience

      Anmerkungen:

      •    Political economy has paid some attention to audiences, particularly to understand the common practice whereby advertisers pay for the size and quality (propensity to consume) of an audience that a newspaper, Magazine, radio or television program can deliver.   Recent audience research by examining audience history and the complex relationship of audiences to the producers of commercial culture. It has also extended the debate over audience labor to the internet where the process of building websites, modifying software. and participating in online communities both resembles and differs from the labor of audiences that Smythe described (Terranova 2004).   
   3. labor

      Anmerkungen:

      •    In addition to examining the process of commodifying media content and audiences, it is important to consider the commodification of media labor. harry braverman the transformation of the labor process in capitalism.   commodification capital acts to separate conception from execution, skill from the raw ability to carry out a task, to concentrate conceptual power in a managerial class that is either a part of capital or represents its Interests, and to reconstitute the labor process with this new distribution of skill and power at the point of production.   
      1. active labor

         Anmerkungen:

         •    It also exists considerable labor resistance:; the contested nature of the process, the active agency of workers, and the trade union movement.   
10. spatialization
    1. time and space

       Anmerkungen:

       • .the political economy of communication is spatialization, or the process of overcoming the constraints of space and time in social ife.space. Today, political economists conclude that rather than annihilate space, business, aided by developments in communication and information technology, transforms space. People, products, and 'messages have to be located somewhere and it is this location that is undergoing significant transformation, upheavals in the international division of labor. especially in China and India.
    2. globalization

       Anmerkungen:

       •     Spatiatization builds upon ideas offered by geographers and sociologists to address structural changes brought about by shifting uses of space and time. Spatialization encompasses the process of globalization, the worldwide restructuring of industries and firms (+ (Globalizatlon Theorles). Restructuring at the industry level is exemplified by the development of integrated markets based on digital technologies and, at the firm level by the growth of the flexible or "virtual" company, which makes use of communication and information systems to continuously change structure, product line, marketing, and relationships to other companies, suppliers, its own workforce and customers.   
    3. corporate power

       Anmerkungen:

       •  The political economy'of communication has traditionally addressed spatialization as the institutional extension of corporate power in the communication industry. This is manifested in the sheer growth in size of media firms, measured by assets: revenues, profit, employees, and stock share values. 
    4. horizontal concentration

       Anmerkungen:

       • Political economy has speciflcally examined growth by taking up different forms of corporate concentration. Horizontal concentration takes place when a firm in one line of media buys a major interest in another media operation that is not directly related to the original business.
       1. cross media

          Anmerkungen:

          • The typical form of this is cross-media concretization or the purchase by a firm in another line of media, say a newspaper., of a firm in a newer line, such as a radio or television station. But horizontal concentration also takes place when a media company buys all or part of a business entirely outside of the media (e.g., when a broadcaster buys a hotel chain)
    5. vertical concentration

       Anmerkungen:

       •    the amalgamation of within a line of business that extend a company's control over the process of production as when a major Hollywood film production studio purchases a distributor of film. This is also referred to as forward integration because it expands a firm further along the production and distribution processes. down the production process.   
       1. venture joint

          Anmerkungen:

          •    In addition to demonstrating how media firms have developed into transnational conglomerates that now rival, in size and power, firms in any industry, political economists are addressing the development of flexible forms of corporate power evidenced in the joint ventures, strategic alliances, and other short-term and project-speclflc arrangements that bring together companies or parts of companIes, including competitors. These take advantage of more flexible means of communication to unite and separate for mutual interest.   
11. structuration

    Anmerkungen:

    •    Concretely, this means broadening the conception of social class from its structural or categorical sense, which defines it in terms of what some have and others do not, to incorporate both a relational and a constitutional sense of the term.   
    1. business and labor

       Anmerkungen:

       •    A relational view of social class foregrounds the connections, for example, between business and labor, and the ways in which labor constitutes itself' within the relationship and as an independent force in its own right. The political economy of communication has addressed class in these terms by the means of communication, and the reproduction of these inequities in social institutions. This has been applied to labor, particularly in research on how communication and information technology has been used to automate and de-skill work, including work in the media industries. It has also been used to show how the means of communication are used to measure and monitor work actlvity in systems of surveillance that extend managerial control over the entire labor process in precise detail.   
    2. social class

       Anmerkungen:

       • defines it according to the practices and processes that link social class categories means, for example, that the working class is not defined simply by lack of access to the means of communication, but by its relationships of harmony, dependency, and conflict to the capitalist class. Moreover, a constiutional/conception of class views the working class as producer of its own, however tenuous, volatile, and conflicted, identity, in relation to capital and independently of it. This research aims to demonstrate how classes constitute themselves, how they make history, in the face of well-researched analysis of the conditions that constrain this history-making activity.
       1. class structuration

          Anmerkungen:

          •    When political economy has given attention to agency, process, and social practice, it tends to focus on social class. There are good reasons for this emphasis. Class structuration is a central entry point for comprehending social life.     
    3. race

       Anmerkungen:

       • race figures in this analysis and in the social process of structuration, as Gandy (1 998) takes up In his multi-perspective assessment of race and the media. Racial divisions are a principal constituent of the multiple hierarchies' of the contemporary global political economy, and race, as both category and social relationship, helps to explain access to national and global resources, including communication media, and .information technology (Pellow & Park 2002).
    4. hegemony

       Anmerkungen:

       •  One of the major activities in structuration 'is the process of constructing hegemony, defined as what comes to be incorporated and contested as the taken-for-granted, commonsense, natural way of thinking about the world, including everything from cosmology through ethics to everyday social practices. Hegemony is a lived network of mutually constituting meanings and values that, as they are experienced as practices, appear to be mutually confirming. Out of the tensions and clashes within various structuration processes, the media come to be organized in full mainstream, oppositional, and alternative forms.
       1. imperalism

          Anmerkungen:

          • Communication studies has addressed imperialism extensively, principally by examining the role of the media and information technology in the maintenance of control by richer over poorer societies.
12. comparison
    1. cultural studies
       1. text

          Anmerkungen:

          • The cultural studies approach is a broad-based intellectual movement that focuses on the constitution of meaning in texts, defined broadly to include all forms of social communication. The approach contains numerous currents and futures that provide for considerable ferment from within. 
       2. positivism

          Anmerkungen:

          • Nevertheless, it can contribute to the understanding of political economy in several ways. Cultural studIes has been open broad-based critique of positivism (the view that sensory observation is the only source of knowledge).
       3. subjectivity

          Anmerkungen:

          • Moreover, it has defended a more open philosophical approach that concentrates on subjectivity or how people interpret their world, as well as on the social creation of knowledge. 
       4. cultrue as ordinary

          Anmerkungen:

          •    Cultural studies has also broadened the meaning of cultural analysis by starting from the premise that culture is ordinary, produced by all social actors rather than primarily by a privileged elite, and that the social is organized around gender and nationality divisions and identities as much as by social class.      
       5. counter argument from pec

          Anmerkungen:

          •    Even as it takes on a philosophical approach that is open to subjectivity and is more broadly inclusive, politlcal economy insists on a realist epistemology that maintains the value of historical research, of thinking in terms of concrete social totalities, with a well-grounded moral philosophy, and a commitment to overcome the distinction between social research and social practice. Political economy departs from the tendency in cultural studies to exaggerate the importance of subjectivity, as well as the inclination to reject thinking in terms of historical practices and social wholes. Political economy also departs from the tendency for proponents of cultural studies to use obscure language that belies the original vision of the approach: that cultural analysis is accessible to the ordinary people who are responsible for creating culture. Finally, it eschews the propensity in cultural studies to reject studies of labor and the labor process in favor of examining the social production of consumption and the ensuing tendency among some in the cultural studies school to deny labor any value In contemporary movements for social change.   
    2. policy studies
       1. state

          Anmerkungen:

          • PolItical economy can also learn from the development of a policy studies ,perspective whose political wing has tended to place the state at the center of analysis, and whose economic wing aims to extend the application of primarily neo-classical economic theory over a wide range of political, social, and cultural life.
       2. goverment and business

          Anmerkungen:

          • Political economy has tended to regard government as overly dependent on and determined by the specific configuration of capital dominant at the time and therefore benefits from an approach that takes seriously the active role of the state. Moreover, political economy shares with policy science the interest in extending analysis. over the entire social totality, wIth an eye to social transformatlon. 
       3. power of business

          Anmerkungen:

          • Nevertheless, political economy departs fundamentally from the policy science tendency to a pluralist political analysis that views the state as the independent arbiter of a wide balance of social forces. none of which has enough power to dominate society. Against this, political economy insists on the power of business and the process of commodification as the starting point of social analysis.
       4. balance(market and labor)

          Anmerkungen:

          •    Furthermore, political economy rejects the tendency of policy science to build its analysis of the social totality, and of the values that should guide its transformation, on individualism and market rationality. Against this, it insists on social processes, starting from social class and labor, and on setting community and public life against the market and rationality that, from a political economy perspective, actually reproduces class power.   

Anmerkungen:

•    information and communication technologies and services (lCTS)-for example, the Intemet, mobile phones, electronic banking, and so on-are changing quite significantly the ways in which knowledge is generated and communicated, and thereby the ways that firms operate, markets function, and economicies develop. They are providing a new electronic communication foundation .or infrastructure for the.econmny capable of transmitting all forms of information (voice, data, pictures, music, film, and video) instantly over global networks at dramatically reduced costs, providing a quantum leap in the number and variety of opportunities for generating and communicating information in advanced twenty-first century economies.    

1. information

   Anmerkungen:

   • the term information is a static stock concept. it suggests inventories of different kinds of knowledge as valuable assets. 
2. communication

   Anmerkungen:

   •  the term communication is a dynamic flow concept, reflecting the process of transmission and exchange of information, knowledge, and values.
3. commodification

   Anmerkungen:

   •     the way that information processes and communication networks are institutionalized. the dominant form of information creation and exchange has shifted from oral discourse flowing outside the bounds of formal market arrangements to the establishment of formal information generating, storage, and transmission institutions, the commoditization of information and its exchange through markets. the most significant change is not the overwhelming volume of information but the institutional structure for its generation and distribution, and the increasing centrality of markets and government policies in shaping the structure(melody).   
   1. governance policy

      Anmerkungen:

      •     it is clear that the conditions for access to the information infrastructure of the knowlede economy will be heavily influenced by the governance policies that are estabilshed and the effectiveness of their implementation. if the matter is left to the market alone, access to the knowledge economy could be even more narrow and excusive than it has been to the industrial economy.   
      1. social insterest

         Anmerkungen:

         •  information and knowledge markets have been heavily influenced by governance policies throughout the history of the industrial economy. Governance policies have been directed toward balancing society's interest in promoting innovation by protecing the innovator's new knowledge, and in permitting access to that knowledge for useful application and the development of additional knowledge
         1. example

            Anmerkungen:

            •    For example, us court decision has permitted and strengthened patent protection for software programs. This has both enhanced the monopoly power of Microsoft and other firms, and helped spawn LINUX and the open-source software movement in response to Microsoft's monopoly power. Monopoly rights over both old and new information content and its transmission have been strengthened significantly by governance policies.   
         2. democracy

            Anmerkungen:

            •    governments have yet to mark out the domain of the public interest in the new economy. in addition to universal access to internet services, there will be the universal information needs of the general public in the new knowledge economy. if economies and societies are going through a transformation to a condition where information and knowledge take on increasing importance, and are provided over next generation networks, then presumably there will be a definable set of public information needs essential to the maintenance of participatory democracy. this information will be necessary for individuals to function effectively as worker(tele-working). citizens(e-voting), and community participants(social networks)     
   2. digitial gap

      Anmerkungen:

      •     the inhernent conflict between maximizing profit in quasi-monopoly information and knowledge markets and the social efficiency of scietal distribution at marginal costs approaching zero has become a central issue in policy debates about knowledge economy governance policies.   
4. power structrure

   Anmerkungen:

   •    Power structure and institution: the importance of information flows and communiation networks to the establishment and maintenance of particular institutions and power structures has been understood since ealiest times. trade rountes and communication links were deliberately designed to maintain centres of power and to overcome international comparartive disadvantage.   
   1. externalities

      Anmerkungen:

      • :both communication networks and information content are characterized by major market imperfections, accentuated by high intial investment costs, major economies of scale and scope, extensive postive externalisties, and low marginal costs. in addition, there are important extra market public insterest obective to be satisfied, including unversal access to a minimal set of communication opportunities and public information. the new knowledge economy will require the guidance of effective governance politices if the potential benefits are to be achieved. government policy and regulation will play a vary large role in shaping the growth and development of the new knowledge economy. although it offers great potential ,it also offers possibilities for systemic market failure if it is not governed effectively. A more widespread distribution of the wealth generated in the knowledge economy because the human resouces attracting this increased investment are also workers and consumers.
5. market deregulation

   Anmerkungen:

   •     that is stimulating fundamental changes in many markets and industries. from public service monopolies to more open competitive markets, prepared the ground for the convergence of information technologies from the computing and electronics industries with communication technologies from telecommunication and broadcasting.     
   1. market structure

      Anmerkungen:

      •    Dominant industry characteristic in the knowledge economy will be highly concentrated network oligopoly markets. this raises a dilemma for governments with respect to the application of existing competition laws and direct industry regulation. Concentrated oligopolies often engage in explicit or implicit self-regulation to preserve market share and oligopoly profits. with significant market power, they are capable of negotiating terms for monimal payments to resouce suppliers, including labour, and distributors, capturing the productivity gains from the new economy for themselves.   the implication of international trade: this trend is strengthening concentrated oligopoly in global markets both in its and other sectors, pointing to a global knowledge economy that will be even more unbalanced with respect to the disparities between rich and poor countries than has been experienced in the industrial economy. thus, the efficiency, productivity and innovation of new knowledge economy markets will depend heavily upon the effectiveness of the market governance policies. (attitudes)   
6. spatilization

   Anmerkungen:

   •    with IP applied to all services, the structure of the overall market for communication services is radically changed from the former vertically integrated structure where most services and facilities were licensed and provided together vertically integrated monopoly telephone company, to a horizontally structured market consisting of separate markets for network infrastructure capacity, network managerment, communication services, and information services. this significantly reduces the barriers to entry to this market and its new submarkets and provides new opportunities for increase participation by new players. firming. Out of the tensions and clashes within various structuration processes, the media come to be organized in full mainstream, oppositional, and alternative forms.
   1. creative destruction

      Anmerkungen:

      •    it also brings the threat of significant losses to those benefiting from the traditional way of doing things-in this case incumbent telecom operators-in a process of creative destruction. this also requries that the inherited structre of policies and regulations be reassessed and modified to meet the new challenges and opportunities unfolding.   
7. human capital

   Anmerkungen:

   •    the knowledge economy revolution is being driven primarily by skilled labour, but so far representing a much smaller protion of the total labour foce. the primary driving economic force may not be physical capital,but human capital the investment in skilled labour.   there is increasing evidence that the pace at which the new tecnologies and services are driving the process of transformation to a knowledge economy depends primarily on the pace of productive investment in human capital, the skill base of labor, management, consumers and policy makers.   
   1. consequence

      Anmerkungen:

      •    1 it could reduce the oscillations in the business cycle, which have been aggravated by the rise and fall of enormous investments in location-specific fixed physical capital. investment in human capital can aviod these aggravated fluctionation.   2 it narrows the gaps between the traditional distinct economic activities of investment, employment, service provision and benefit to the population. more welfare for people.   3corporate training remains limited and specialized because of a recognition that firms may not realize the benefits of their investments in human capital as enhanced skill may not open opportunities for employees with competitiors. privately funded education and training is increasing among the wealthy.   

Anmerkungen:

• economies where the major driving force for economic growth and development is activities relating to the generation, distribution, and application of knowledge. this transformation is exhibited not only by the rapid growth and development os new ICTS, but more impotantly by their pervasive application throughout virtually all sectors of the economy.   

1. six feature

   Anmerkungen:

   •    1the development and use of advanced high speed telecom networks-the information infrastructure 2the conditions governing the increased generation and use of information content 3great emphasis on the role of human capital as the principal producer 4application of ICT service and content to increase productivity through all sectors of the economy 5the structure and efficiency of new knowledge economy markets(monopoly) 6the implications for international trade in a global knowledge economy.   
2. two characteristics

   Anmerkungen:

   •    1 the relatively high costs of establishing most databases, and information and knowledge services 2 the relatively low costs of extending the market for services already created, provide a powerful tendency toward contralization and monopoly on an international basis.