Author: Schiller and Yeo

Political Economy of Communication Syllabi

Teaching the Political Economy of Communication

By Schiller and Yeo

In a stroke of good luck, IO has been able to obtain syllabi for North American courses in the political economy of communication offered by historical and contemporary leaders in this field:  Dallas Smythe, Herbert Schiller, Vincent Mosco, and Janet Wasko. Smythe’s and Herbert Schiller’s syllabi were each given to Dan Schiller nearly fifty years ago; while Professors Mosco and Wasko kindly sent us theirs for this special posting.  All apart from Herbert Schiller’s are graduate course syllabi. The syllabi reflect thinking and pedagogy in the political economy of communication over a period of sixty years.  They offer a glimpse of both the diverse range of perspectives enfolded in this tradition, and some of the changes and continuities that have marked it. 

China Executive Order 14105 Geopolitics

New US Attempt to Contain China: President Biden’s Executive Order on US Investment

By Schiller and Yeo

On August 9, President Joe Biden signed a long-anticipated Executive Order to restrict US outbound financial investments in a “narrow set of technologies” in “countries of concern” – China including the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong and the Special Administrative Region of Macau.[1] The Order covers three industries: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. This idea of limiting outbound investment came up during the Trump Administration as part of The Foreign Investment Review Risk Modernization Act of 2018,[2] but was removed from the bill due to pressure from the business sector.[3] There followed a series of measures against China focused on the tightening of export controls. With its embrace of restrictions on outbound investment, the new Executive Order constitutes a stunning reversal of US policy, which for decades has pressed coercively for open cross-border investment. Thus, it offers another sign that the US is turning away from freedom of investment and trade and toward digital protectionism.

The new rules mostly target US venture capital, private equity and joint venture investment, the key drivers of the US/China integration that nurtured the expansion of the Chinese internet sector even as they also enriched US investors. With the current geopolitical tension, US venture capital investment into China has already dropped to a 10-year low at $1.3 billion, down from a high of $14.4 billion in 2018.[4] Private equity plummeted to $ 1.4 billion in the first half of 2023 from a peak $48.48 billion in 2021.[5] It is an open question whether the Executive Order will be sufficient to choke off China’s tech power and Chinese tech start-ups from US capital;however, this move is sure to intensify the existing geopolitical competition and further divide the two largest global economies.

The Biden administration has stated that “national security risk” is the reason behind the measures, emphasizing that these are “narrowly targeted actions to protect our national security.”[6] It is clear, however, that the rationale is economic as well as military. It is intended to further contain and retard China’s tech power in advanced technology and, reciprocally, to make more room for the US’s own market and strategic interests in this key field.

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Broadband Fiber-optic cables Utility Poles

Greed, Fear, and Public Need in Today’s Telecommunications

By Schiller and Yeo

How are telecommunications network development priorities shaped? Recent news stories shed some light. A profit motive is overwhelming other social objectives in network infrastructure projects, from utility poles throughout rural areas to Arctic Ocean fiber-optic cables.

Utility Poles

In the US, it is a given that broadband infrastructure will not be built out unless there is money to be made – because business interests have been permitted to provide internet access across the country. The COVID pandemic made the results clear, as people in poor and rural areas struggled to access the internet – which is no longer a luxury but a necessity for work, school, and life in general.

The pandemic that claimed over one million lives in the US propelled federal intervention to expand broadband infrastructure, by allocating $65 billion as part of the Infrastructure Investment Bill and American Jobs Act (IIJA) in 2021.[1] In 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it would fund over $1.2 billion to expand broadband services in rural areas as part of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund involving 23 broadband providers.[2]

This is good news to be sure; however, a contest between opposed corporate interests erupted around a 19th-century invention that is still crucial to today’s broadband infrastructure – utility poles – stymieing the FCC’s plan.[3]

Utility poles are so ubiquitous as to be nearly unseen in our built environment. However, in order to build broadband infrastructure, internet providers must either lease access to existing networks of poles, or install their own new poles to attach their cables and hardware. Both of these are expensive and politically-charged options.

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Labor Media Reform South Korea Strike

A Long Fight for Media Democracy in South Korea

By Schiller and Yeo

North Korea has been much in the news lately, but, for an object-lesson in how to combat news management by the state, we may look south of the 38th parallel. For, during recent months, the legacy of authoritarian rule in the Republic of Korea (ROK) has once again exploded into public view – not as an ancient memory, but as a continuing abuse of democratic freedoms.  Media workers’ response to the South Korean state’s controls over free expression merit our attention.

Thirty years ago, a nation-wide democracy movement led by intellectuals, students, workers, farmers and various other groups drew a global spotlight on the Republic of Korea.[1] It led, in 1987, to the toppling of the country’s long-standing military dictatorship. This regime change opened up additional opportunities for Koreans to pursue the process of political democratization. These, however, did not succeed. While there were continued efforts to reduce economic disparity, curtail corporate power and improve social welfare, successive liberal governments weren’t able to deliver the political and economic reforms that they had promised. Instead, South Korea subordinated itself to a market-driven neoliberal system.[2] Regaining power, conservative administrations, first under Lee Myung-Bak and then Park Geun-hye – whose father, General Park Jung-Hee, had imposed a military regime on the country until his assassination in 1979 – have again undermined Korea’s democratic path.

The seesaw has now thankfully swung the other way. One year ago, millions of Koreans filled the streets for a period of six months: students, women’s groups, labor- and farmers unions, and the general public. The trigger was a corruption scandal that the president proved unable to contain. But the underlying factors included widespread anger about increasing economic inequality, rising youth unemployment, contingent labor[3] and the deteriorating conditions faced by public sector workers. This “candlelight movement” ultimately succeeded in bringing down President Park Geun-Hye in December, 2016. In the wake of historically massive protests, Park was impeached for her corruption and abuses of power.[4] A new president, Moon Jae-in of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, took office in 2017.

But the movement, the latest incarnation of South Korea’s decades-long struggle for a democracy that would include media reform as well as government- and corporate accountability and workers’ rights,[5] is still far from finished.

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