Industry (Media Studies)

An economic branch of society that is concerned with the production of goods and their consumption by consumers. Production refers to the manufacturing of goods and their corresponding ideologies. Labor is involved in production; theories drawing on Marxism (particularly from the Frankfurt School) are thus important in the study of the media industry. The term culture industries, coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their work, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” addressed the manipulation of audiences while they consume goods produced by the media industry. Furthermore, Dallas Smythe argued that audiences are commodities that work while viewing media texts produced by industry in his 1981 work, “On the Audience Commodity and Its Work.” Other important theorists referred to in media studies to examine the relationship between audiences, culture, and industry are Susan Willis, Herbert Schiller, Nicholas Garnham, and Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. For more information, see Adorno and Horkheimer (1972) and Smythe (1981).