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The Four-Leafed Clover: Political Economy as a Method of Analysis

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The Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa

Abstract

Political economy of the media is one of the few traditions in media studies that have drawn on both a North American and European (specifically British) heritage. It has a long and well-documented history, and over time has managed to weather periods of vibrant expansion and heavy criticism (Garnham, 2011; Hardy, 2014). The reason for this, I suspect, is that political economy is a holistic, embracing paradigm, flexible to the needs of the time while maintaining a core integrity of rigor and normative principle. Based in the heart of “Western” economics, and Eurocentric to the core, these precepts are still able to explain in large measure the specificities of local historical and current social science events. In this chapter I attempt to explore how such approaches can be used not only as a paradigm, but as a methodology to research, account for and teach media and media-related phenomena. The chapter will be illustrated with two mini-case studies taken from the southern African mediascape, one historic, one contemporary.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although South African broadcast media shared many the traits of authoritarian, post-colonial broadcasting, the specifics and context of the 1990s transition were sufficiently different not to include the example here. Primarily, the South African transition was politically driven, a consequence of the changing balance of power between the (then ruling party) the all-white Nationalist Party and the integrated populist liberation party, the African National Congress (ANC). The broadcasting transition was highly negotiated and a structured set of processes, the centerpiece being was the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and later the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA). This was a regulatory revolution.

  2. 2.

    The empirical data used here has been drawn primarily from secondary sources, specifically annual reports and newspaper articles taken from financial newspapers and journals, accessed through the use of online archives.

  3. 3.

    Independent Newspapers; Caxton, Times Media and Naspers.

  4. 4.

    In the financial year 2014–2015, the print business recorded marginal growth in revenue, flattening out at R12bn (Annual Report, 2015). “Trading profit dropped … as the print industry continued to face sectorial headwinds globally”’ (Naspers Annual Report, 2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Ruth Teer-Tomaselli

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  1. Ruth Teer-Tomaselli
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  1. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Bruce Mutsvairo

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Teer-Tomaselli, R. (2018). The Four-Leafed Clover: Political Economy as a Method of Analysis. In: Mutsvairo, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70443-2_8

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