From its foundation in the later 18th century, political economy has been centrally concerned with understanding how the production and delivery of goods and services are structured by relations between capital and government, and how private interests should be balanced against the public good. This chapter asks how the dual impact of marketisation and digitalisation has altered the organisation and practice of journalism and the conditions of public access to communicative resources for active citizenship, and what can be done to make provision more comprehensive and inclusive. The constitution of citizenship and participatory politics was at the core of this concern. Adam Smith’s manifesto for minimally regulated capitalist markets, The Wealth of Nations, appeared in 1776, the same year that Britain’s American colonies declared their independence and founded a republic based on elective assembly. Newspapers launched websites in the expectation that increased visibility and interaction would cement reader loyalty and boost print edition sales.

This article outlines the growth and character of media and communication studies in the UK. It sets out the history and development of the field, and explains its twin origins in both humanities and social sciences contexts. The article also presents some descriptive data about the scale and nature of teaching and research in the field in UK higher education, and explains the evolution of relevant subject associations. The public, political and professional reception of and responsse to the field are described, and the continuing debates about its value and salience examined.

This chapter argues that sociologists interested in contemporary mass communications need to pay careful and detailed attention to the ways in which the economic organisation and dynamics of mass media production determines the range and nature of the resulting output. In the author's view, any sociological analysis of the ways in which the mass media operate as ideological agencies which fails to pay serious attention to the economic determinants framing production is bound to be partial. In addition to highlighting problems of methodology, the Panorama piece also exemplifies the key conceptual focus of much contemporary British work — namely its concern with the relationship between the media and the state. The chapter also argues that the production of ideology cannot be separated from or adequately understood, without grasping the general economic dynamics of media production and the determinations they exert.

Technological change in communications and media has been substantial and dramatic in recent years, particularly arising from the growth of the internet and social media. This can lead analysis to give undue emphasis to technological innovation at the expense of the enduring patterns of social structure which lie behind them. This article stresses the importance of such continuities by briefly illustrating the importance of power, inequality, identity and social change in relation to communications processes and institutions.

Citizenship is an active role, requiring information to enable people to deliberate and arrive at decisions that they can then effectively voice. This article argues that the cumulative evidence of research is that mainstream media fail to provide such information and the essential analysis to buttress it. The result is information detriment, a significant element within a broader citizen detriment. This problem is only minimally addressed by the proliferation of information accessible through the widening availability of online and digital resources. Deepening inequality is translated into citizen detriment because of the growing cost of information resources. Evidence is provided of the significant advantages of the better off in an increasingly commercial and costly information environment, both as consumers of information and through lobbying, as sources of ideas and information in the political and public arena. The fundamental problem at the heart of this issue, therefore, is that of growing material inequality more than media and communication practice and policy.

Interview with Peter Golding, Emeritus Professor at Northumbria University, Visiting Professor in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University and one of the crucial figures in Critical Political Economy of Communication. In the interview we discuss the role of critical scholarship, the sometimes troubled relationship between cultural studies and critical political economy of communication, the importance of a sociological perspective in studying media, and the impact of broader socio-political trends on academia.

Volume 1 Communism and capitalism: defining political economy communications and capitalist enterprise communications, ideology and capitalism communication and the global order. Volume 2 Communications and the common good: private interest to common goods public broadcasting and the public interest policing the public interest institutionalizing diversity.

This is a response to an article by Paul Dwyer in this Journal which makes several claims about the nature and impact of the political economy approach to the analysis of media and communications. We argue that Dwyer’s article misunderstands or is unaware of the history of this approach, and quite fundamentally misconstrues its central tenets. Our response explains how, in capitalist societies, media organisations are integrated into general processes of accumulation, how they exercise power, and how their strategies shape the communications landscape. We explain how the critical political economy approach actually works and illustrate how it has been deployed for concrete analysis in ways that Dwyer seems unaware of. Analysis of shifts in the organisation of capitalism and of their consequences for the structure of cultural production is essential alongside detailed research into how shifting webs of pressure and opportunity impinge on the everyday business of crafting cultural goods in specific cultural industries. We argue that, contra Dwyer, contemporary analysis has a rich legacy of work in both areas on which to build.

Noting that the Better Together/No campaign was uniformly supported by the English press, the chapter begins by observing how the media influence what people think about, if not determining what they think. It proposes that, given its reach, the English press framing of the referendum will have had an impact on the Scottish referendum, even if most of its readers had no vote therein. This is not least because of the presence of ultimately London-edited newspapers in Scotland. The chapter discusses the relative absence of London press coverage of the referendum beyond a concentrated period a fortnight or so before the poll, and finds that it focuses on a narrow range of issues, including consequences of a Yes vote for the UK economy as a whole, seemingly insensitive to wider ramifications of the debate. Among the conclusions of the analysis is the suggestion that Scottish matters in the English press are handled to an extent like foreign affairs stories more generally.

The authors introduce the European Science Foundation Forward Look Report Media in Europe: New Questions for Research and Policy (2013) which summarises the conclusions and recommendations of a series of ESF workshops held in 2012 to draw up a strategic research and science policy agenda for media studies in Europe for the next 5-10 years. The presentations in five meetings, along with informal dialogue and exchanges, shed greater light on the pervasive role of the media in so many areas of social, economic, cultural and political life. Five articles based on the ESF workshop position papers by the same authors, debates in the workshops and the final conference held in Ljubljana in January 2013, and respective chapters of the ESF Forward Look Report, discuss current trends in mediated identity formation, the 'digital divide' conundrum, political participation in an age of mediatisation, the agency of content creators, and research literature on media literacy.