Media Policy Research and the Media Industries

Abstract

This essay highlights the need for a critical approach to policy as a key feature of media industries research. All too often media policy is understood and investigated as an administrative procedure that appears to be remote from the more dazzling world of media production and consumption, and of texts and audiences. This essay argues that issues of creativity and practice should not be insulated from analysis of the structural contexts of media environments. It also argues that media policy research itself needs to expand its horizons to include the full range of actors and venues—unofficial as well as official—in which decisions about the distribution of media resources are made. A critical media policy should focus on the interests mobilized and values expressed in relation to different policy areas by situating policy debates in relation to the dynamics of power that circumscribe the institutions, individuals, products, and possibilities of the media industries.