The Political Economy of Communication (Second Edition)

The Political Economy of Communication (Second Edition) Vincent Mosco: London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2009. ISBN 978-1-4129-4701-5. 268pp.

A New Classic in the Field

The political economy of communication is a subdisciplinary framework for critical scholarly engagement with the technical, social, economic, political and cultural dimensions of communication. Because of the dramatic and continuing changes that have taken place within communications as a social practice, as well as in its role as core structural feature of the global economic system, this framework has also had to change. This means, of course, that the best presentation of this framework, as provided by Vincent Mosco in 1996, would eventually have to be updated and revised. While the Second Edition of The Political Economy of Communication, published in 2009, will also have to be revised at some point in the future, this current version is a resource without equal.

Mosco, currently Professor Emeritus at Queen's University in Canada, was Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society and Professor of Sociology at Queens when he set out to substantially revise his already classic introduction to this field of study. Mosco's own framework for thinking about the political economy of communication is laid out upon a carefully prepared background and introduction to the field that spans six introductory chapters. This expanded introduction provides important historical details and careful expositions that outline clear distinctions between competing schools of thought. These key insights are made readily accessible to the average...