Markets

This entry highlights markets as a key concept for a variety of communication phenomena and scholarship, especially in media studies and political economy. As a label for how groups of people may be constructed and conceptualized (i.e., the targeting of lucrative markets for the generation of capital), the term contrasts with other noneconomistic labels, such as “citizen,” “public,” or “audience.” When “market” is used in the domain of communication, it often refers to the imposition of capitalist, economistic, and profitability logics upon communication participants and activity. “Market” helps us to understand the economic dynamics and performance of our commercial media systems and advertising as a funding and cultural force. Trends in marketization, in which for-profit market assumptions are built into a variety of social phenomena, also affect world media systems and elements of society such as communication in healthcare, academia, politics, digital culture, and even presentation of the self.