Critical Political Economy of Communication as Inquiry into Historical Formations

Jay Hamilton. “Critical Political Economy of Communication as Inquiry into Historical Formations,” presented in a panel for AEJMC Theory Colloquium, History Division, AEJMC National Convention, Philadelphia, August 2024.

Abstract: The continued challenge of scholars working through the lens of critical political economy of communications is how to more fully extend and implement its relational and contextual epistemology. Avoiding presuming from the outset the pre-existence of “structures,” “elites,” “ideology,” “society” and the like avoids the limitations of conventional case studies regarding ostensibly essentialized causes and isolated effects. This paper addresses this challenge by presenting a case for enlarging and further materializing critical political economy into a focus on historical formations as a transformative process through time as well as a particular confluence of relations, pressures and processes at a point in time. Greater recognition and concrete implementation of a radically relational and historical epistemology of this kind in research on media and communication generates deeper insights into transformations in media and communication.