Financialisation, Media and Social Change

This paper examines the role of the media in shaping the public debate on finance and the economy, and the way this impacts on social change both at the level of policy and of individual behaviours. It is founded in debates about financialisation and neoliberalism which focus on the shift of power to large corporations and the way society has been transformed by the corporatisation of public life. One result of these structural developments is an increasingly integrated political and media culture which promotes the interests of the market and operates to limit the information available to audiences in understanding the issues. Alternative solutions to economic problems are effectively removed from public debate as shown through a discussion of media representations of the current economic crisis and possible responses to it. This limiting of alternatives is implicated in the shaping of sympathetic attitudes to ‘preferred’ views and actions and can facilitate preferred directions in social change at the level of policy by limiting the potential for effective resistance. Whilst the relationship between the media, attitudes and behaviours is complex, behavioural change, as reflected in, say, home-owning trends, is most likely to occur when media accounts are supported by policy moves.