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.

Contributions by: Marc Bogdanowicz, Jean-Claude Burgelman, Andrew Calabrese, Richard Collins, James Curran, Oscar H. Gandy, Peter Golding, Elissaveta Gourova, Tatsuro Hanada, Sylvia Harvey, Robert Horwitz, Michèle Javary, Robin Mansell, Robert McChesney, Bernard Miège, Vincent Mosco, Graham Murdock, John Durham Peters, Giuseppe Richeri, Ellen Riordan, Colin Sparks, Thomas Streeter, Janet Wasko