Neoliberalism And The Media

This book examines the multiple ways that popular media mainstream and reinforce neoliberal ideology, exposing how they promote neoliberalism’s underlying ideas, values and beliefs so as to naturalize inequality, undercut democracy and contribute to the collapse of social notions of community and the common good. Covering a wide range of media and genres, and adopting a variety of qualitative textual methodologies and theoretical frameworks, the chapters examine diverse topics, from news coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential election to the NBC show Superstore (an atypical instance in which a TV show, for one brief season, challenged the central tenets of neoliberalism) to "kitchen porn." The book also takes an intersectional approach, as contributors explore how gender, race, class and other aspects of social identity are inextricably tied to each other within media representation. At once innovative and distinctive in its illustration of how the media is complicit in perpetuating neoliberal ideology, Neoliberalism and the Media offers students and scholars alike an incisive portrait of the intersection between media and ideology today.

Neoliberalism, Media and the Political examines the condition of media and journalism in neoliberal cultures. Emphasizing neoliberalism's status as a political ideology that is simultaneously hostile to politics, the book presents a critical theoretical argument supported by empirical illustrations from New Zealand, Ireland, the UK and the US.

Following the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, a number of prominent academics, journalists, and activists were quick to pronounce the demise of neoliberal capitalism and governance. This rather optimistic prediction, however, underestimated the extent to which neoliberalism has shaped the 21st-century world order and become entrenched in our sociopolitical and cognitive fabric. Indeed, 11 years after the crisis, and in spite of the significant levels of socioeconomic inequality, psychological distress, and environmental destruction generated by neoliberal policies and corresponding business and cultural practices, the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism has not been supplanted, nor has it really faced any serious unsettling. How, then, has neoliberalism inflected and shaped our “common-sense” understandings of what is politically, economically, and culturally viable? To help answer this question, this book combines leading theories from sociology, media-communication research, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, and draws on primary evidence from a unique mix of ethnographic, survey, and experimental studies – of young people’s leisure practices and educational experiences, of young adults’ political socialisation processes in relation to exposure to social networking sites, and of the effects of commercial media viewing on material values and support for social welfare. In doing so, it provides a nuanced and robustly empirically tested account of how the conscious and non-conscious cognitive dimensions of people’s subjectivities and everyday social practices become interpellated through and reproductive of neoliberal ideology. As such, this book will appeal to scholars across the social and behavioural sciences with interests in neoliberalism, political engagement, enculturation, social reproduction, and media effects.

Neoliberalism, Media and the Political examines the condition of media and journalism in neoliberal cultures. Emphasizing neoliberalism's status as a political ideology that is simultaneously hostile to politics, the book presents a critical theoretical argument supported by empirical illustrations from New Zealand, Ireland, the UK and the US.

Thanks to the rise of neoliberalism over the past several decades, we live in an era of rampant anxiety, insecurity, and inequality. While neoliberalism has become somewhat of an academic buzzword in recent years, this book offers a rich and multilayered introduction to what is arguably the most pressing issue of our times. Engaging with prominent scholarship in media and cultural studies, as well as geography, sociology, economic history, and political theory, author Julie Wilson pushes against easy understandings of neoliberalism as market fundamentalism, rampant consumerism, and/or hyper-individualism. Instead, Wilson invites readers to interrogate neoliberalism in true cultural studies fashion, at once as history, theory, practice, policy, culture, identity, politics, and lived experience. Indeed, the book’s primary aim is to introduce neoliberalism in all of its social complexity, so that readers can see how neoliberalism shapes their own lives, as well as our political horizons, and thereby start to imagine and build alternative worlds.

This collection brings together major and emerging media analysts to consider key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. The editors present a formidable range of theoretical viewpoints and approaches, applied to a broad and fascinating variety of case studies, from reality television to the BBC World Service, from blogging to control of copyright.

Risk and Hyperconnectivity brings the paradigms of new risk theory, neoliberalization they, and connectivity theory together for the first time to illuminate how the kaleidoscope of risk events in the opening years of the new century has recharged a neoliberal battlespace of media, economy, and security. Probing a series of risk events that have already contoured the twenty-first century, this account shows how both established and emergent media are central in shaping past, present and future horizons of neoliberalism, while also propelling pressure for its alternatives.

What does it mean to have a voice in a formal democracy operating under neoliberal guidelines and with an almost entirely private media system? How can the people gain their voice and engage in a dialogue with hegemonic actors and discourses? In this book, Jorge Saavedra Utman examines the role of media and communicative practices during one of the largest social mobilizations in Latin America in the last 30 years: Chile’s 2011 students’ movement. Saavedra Utman observes the eye-catching, subversive, but also intimate practices that, in a country with a liberal democracy and neoliberal policies, allowed people to speak up and become political actors from grassroots positions. Presenting rich qualitative data that is sourced from interviews and focus groups with activists, he introduces a fresh perspective on the study of media and communications and social movements. Saavedra Utman paints a clearer picture of contentious events since 2011 - like the Arab Spring and Occupy – to understand the relevance of media and communications in contemporary quests for participation and democracy. Promising to be an important book, The Media Commons and Social Movements represents a significant contribution to our understanding of communicative dimensions of protest and social change.