What concerns me most about critical political economy is the question of who truly has power within media. As I build an independent talk show studio with the long-term vision of becoming a multimedia network, I am already thinking about what that means for the creatives who will work within it. I believe people carry something valuable inside of them that deserves to be heard and seen, but I never want that platform to become a place where I control or take ownership of someone else’s work. Burkart (n.d.) explains that critical political economy seeks to understand “the underlying power relations” within communication and society. This makes me think beyond simply opening a studio and consider ownership, copyright, algorithms, surveillance, and government influence. Who controls the message, the platform, and access to audiences? As I build toward a multimedia network, these are questions I believe I must consider from the beginning.
This article came from my Media Institutions class, and I found it to be a really useful source of foundational knowledge as I think about the future of the media project I am building. While reading, I found myself thinking beyond the immediate goal of launching and began considering what this could look like five to ten years from now. Who are the media gatekeepers? Who ultimately has control, and how does economic power affect an independently built media company? I also began thinking about what could happen if larger organizations or corporations want to partner with the network in the future and what that could mean for ownership, creative control, and the direction of the company. These are questions I had not fully considered before, which made the article especially valuable to me. This week, I also met with my videographer to outline how we will begin the project. I also wrote down several questions from the reading that I want to explore as I continue developing my MA project.
Burkart, P. (n.d.). Political economy. In The craft of criticism (Chap. 10).