Localism in Internet governance: The rise of China's provincial web

Often analysing ‘the Chinese Internet’ as a national entity, existing research has overlooked China's provincially oriented web portals, which have supplied information and entertainment to substantial user populations. Through the lenses of the critical political economy of media and critical media industry studies, this article traces the ascendance of China's provincial web from the late 1990s to the early 2000s by analysing industry yearbooks, official reports, conference records, personal memoirs, archived webpages, and user traffic data. We uncover interactions between Internet service providers, legacy media organizations, commercial Internet companies, and the central and local governments – each driven by discrete economic interests, political concerns, and imaginaries about the new technology. Delineating the emergence and consolidation of China's provincial web, our study foregrounds the understudied political economy of online content regionalization at scale. Further, it sheds new light on Chinese media policy, Internet governance, and Internet histories, especially the widely noted conservative turn of online cultures after the mid-2010s.

Commodification, Spatialization, and Structuring in Instagram (Vincent Mosco's Descriptive Political Economy Study on Instagram Anies Baswedan Related to Covid-19)

Instagram is one of the social media that is widely used by Indonesians. Instagram users in Indonesia are under Instagram users from the United States, Brazil and China. The emergence of social media Instagram is a new and interesting dynamic to research based on Vincent Mosco's descriptive study of the political economy of the economy. One way to see and analyze an issue or phenomenon of communication is through the descriptive study of Vincent Mosco's political economy and economy. In theory, Mosco refers to the globalization of the political economy of media which explains where there is a transition from old media and when new media emerge. Thus the formulation of the problem of this research is how the political economy practice of communication in the use of Instagram social media during the Covid-19 pandemic which was observed from Anies Baswedan's Instagram account. This study uses a descriptive research method in order to provide an overview description of the political economy practice of communication on Instagram social media during the Covid-19 pandemic which was observed from the Instagram account of the Governor of DKI Jakarta, Anies Baswedan. It can be concluded that social media is a means based on internet technology (online media) such as Instagram which allows a person to interact, communicate, collaborate and share information with others. Even Instagram users can easily participate directly in it. Commodification, spatialization and structuration are three important elements in political economy because they can bring about changes in function or use values. Commodification is one of the elements that is directly related to how the process of transforming goods or services (along with their use value) into a commodity that has an exchange value in the market. Spatialization is a process when dealing with time and space. Structuring is a communication or media activity associated with social structures.

Disruption and Collaboration in Digital Journalism: Ambivalence of Social Responsibility and Political Economy Practices of Media Companies

Digitization encourages journalism to transform. Since the development of digital media, communication and media scholars have predicted journalism to develop at two levels. First, journalism evolves along with technological developments and is involved in media disruption. Second, journalism sticks with professionalism and establish technology as a tool to realize social responsibility. Today we are dealing with the transformation in journalism that we get from disrupted contents, disrupted media companies, and collaboration among media institutions. Various digital journalism platforms have emerged as a manifestation of the diversity of content and diversity of media ownership. This was an exploratory study that aimed to explain collaborations among various media in the digital ecosystem. The focus of this study was to map media networks through media data distributed in various official media or regulators. The results of this study showed that in a digital ecosystem that promises many opportunities, digital journalism still has to deal with the dilemma between social responsibility and the political economy of media. On the one hand, digital journalism faces disruption which serves as a significant factor that encourages journalism to transform. On the other hand, digital journalism also deals with a natural selection that forces them to collaborate, i.e. a manifestation of the political economy of media. Keywords: Digital journalism, disruption, collaboration, social responsibility, media companies.

Media, Elections, and Ethnopolitics in Kenya: In the 2017 Elections Reportage, Ethnicity still Mattered

This study examined the value of ethnopolitics during media reporting of the 2017 electoral process in Kenya. The study relied on the political economy of media theory by Vincent Mosco the propaganda theory by Herman and Chomsky and the theory of agenda-setting by McCombs and Shaw. The study used descriptive research design with the population of the study drawn from Nakuru Town Sub-County. Our research relied on observation schedules to obtain data from the televised political analyses shows and propaganda political videos clip. Interview schedules were used for media practitioners (editors, reporters and media sellers) and politicians (MPs and MCAs), while unstructured questionnaires were used for the media consumers (audience). All qualitative data were processed and analysed using the critical interpretative approach, while the quantitative data were presented descriptively in tables, graphs, charts and percentages generated using SPSS software. The study findings indicated that during the 2017 electoral process in Kenya, political players used ethnopolitics to capture extensive media coverage. Similarly, there was a direct influence of ethnopolitics and ethnopolitical journalism on the media consumer knowledge and ethnopolitics normalisation. The study recommends that media, being the most influential cultural institution and player in the political economy, self-regulates to minimise ethnopolitics dissemination. The output of this study adds to the existing knowledge in communication and media studies and the political economy of mass media. The findings should be able to inform policy formulation among the mass media industry and media regulatory bodies in Kenya. Keywords: ethnicity, ethnopolitics, ethnopolitical oligarchy, political economy of communication

Media: Komodifikasi Keberpihakan Politik (Analisa Ekonomi Politik MNC Media Group)

The mass media industry since the reform era has changed significantly, freedom of press had been widely opened, furthermore with technological advances and the birth of social media. Competitiveness in the mass media industry is tougher in market dominance. Media owners in Indonesia are competing to penetrate the market and secure their business positions by joining the politics, even the media itself is allegedly used by the owner as a commodity that can gain profit and become a propaganda’s tool for certain political interests. MNC Media Group is a media owned by Hary Tanoesoedibjo, a businessman and politician from the Perindo Party. Then, how does Hary Tanoesoedibjo commodify the MNC Media Group? Theory of Political Economy of Media, Vincent Moscow (1996) discusses the concept of commodification, explaining how the process of transforming goods and services with their use value into a policy that has an exchange rate in the market. The analysis by the author is to see at the relationships behind the production, consumption and distribution processes carried out by the MNC Media Group. Commodification of MNC Media Group is carried out through three types of commodification, namely; commodification of contents, audiences and workers. Commodification is made using the economy and politics by its owner, Hary Tanoesoedibjo which is carried out in the form of an integrated business unit, or a synergy between all business units, raising and builing a positive image for the owner by using legitimacy of the power relations.Keywords: Mass Media, Commodification, Power Relations

Racialized Media

This book examines the design (imagining and producing), delivery (distribution, gatekeeping, and cultural mediation), and decoding (reception, consumption, and debate) of varied genres and styles of contemporary racialized media. In line with what the late great media sociologist Stuart Hall called the “circuit of culture,” the authors herein collectively analyze, first, the production side of imagining and encoding ideological meanings and narratives, the material structures, the people involved, and global political economy of media; second, the arena of distribution in which marketing strategies, gatekeeping traditions, laws and policies, and professional customs structure where and how media is framed; and third, the practices of consumption whereby audience receive, interpret, and debate racialized media. Despite pronouncements that we have reached a “postracial” or “colorblind” society or that racial—and racist—meanings are only the domains of extremist activism and political rhetoric, we demonstrate how dominant racial meanings are deployed, negotiated, and contested in the behind-the-scenes productive activity with, distributive processes regarding, and consumer reactions to racialized media. The chapters highlight the multidirectional influences between media, the racialized climate of politics and culture, reverberations of media meanings in society, and experiences of media consumption along the lines of race, class, and gender positionalities. To analyze these complex relationships, contributing authors utilize various forms of media, including film, television, books, newspapers, social media, video games, and comics, among others.

The Political Economy of Media in Turkey

This study examines the infrastructural features of the media industry in Turkey in the 2000s. The study posits that the analysis of the inner workings of the media as an industrial-social institution is a way of understanding how the media is related with the overall system it is a part of. In order to do that, it is crucial to undertake the infrastructural mapping of the media. In this study, the dimensions of the media industry such as the branches of economic activity, geographical distribution, corporate structures and scales, employment, wages, gender distribution, and unionization levels are discussed as the basic indicators forming the infrastructure of the media industry. The datasets which the study is based on are taken from the NACE codes, which are used in the statistical classification of economic activities in Europe and are also valid for Turkey. The boundaries of media industry are defined through six basic branches of economic activity classified in NACE 18, 58, 59, 60, 63,73 codes and these fields of activity are discussed both by themselves and as a relational whole.