Several of the most important and influential political economists of
communication working today explore a rich mix of topics and issues that
link work, policy studies, and research and theory about the public
sphere to the heritage of political economy. Familiar but still
exceedingly important topics in critical political economy studies are
well represented here: market structures and media concentration,
regulation and policy, technological impacts on particular media
sectors, information poverty, and media access. The book also features
new topics for political economy study, including racism in audience
research, the value and need for feminist approaches to political
economy studies, and the relationship between the discourse of media
finance and the behavior of markets.