The political economy of digital technologies
in Koch, G. (2017), Digitisation. Routledge.
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The political economy of digital technologies is a relatively young field of research which has rapidly grown over the last two decades. I am not aware of an attempt to outline this field in a more systematic way. In fact, it might be debatable whether such an attempt makes much sense in view of the rapid growth of this field and its dynamic transformations and expansions. For this reason, the following reflections are an attempt to provide a provisional appraisal of this field. What is also debatable is the newness of this field of research. While I am claiming that the political economy of digital technologies (PEDT) is an emerging field, it does not come out of nowhere. It has a predecessor, it is emerging from another field of research, the political economy of media and communication (PEMC). I propose two things: Firstly, that PEDT has its roots in PEMC, and that it has developed from PEMC. Secondly, that PEDT has developed with a number of significant transformations and expansions. These expansions from PEMC are so profound that it is indeed legitimate to conceptualise PEDT as a new field of study, which focuses on different themes and questions, which uses and produces different theoretical concepts, and which finally embarks on a different understanding of what it means to create scholarly work.
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