Anthony Y.H. Fung Politics of Media Economics and Economy of Media Politics: An Overview Contemporary macro-conceptual studies of the relationships among the state, the capitalist system, and the media often focus either on the authori- ties' political control of the media, or the capitalists' economic control of the media market. While the former, namely, the political interpretation of the media content, adopts a structuralist perspective; the latter, the eco- nomic analysis employs an instrumental view of political economy. This paper discusses the possibility of an integration of the political and eco- nomic approaches under a revised perspective of political economy of mass communication. Structuralism, Instrumentalism and Media Studies Structuralists, under a neo-Marxist legacy, have long regarded social insti- tutions as defenders or legitimizers of status quo. Among those, media in particular are "core systems for the distribution of ideology," giving "forms" and "substances" to events (Denton and Hahn 1986). Mass media serve the establishment to "define" and to "define away its opposition" (Gitlin 1980, 2) in news construction and frames. Media frames are persis- tent patterns of cognition, interpretation and presentation, and of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which journalists routinely organize dis- courses and construct reality (Tuchman 1978, 192-3; Goffman 1974, 10-1; see Adoni and Mane 1984 for a summary). Embedded in the structuralist analysis are certain normative implica- tions: mass media are said to reflect not only the "locus of social power" (Tichenor, Donohue and Olien 1980, 224) but also the "power relation- ship" (Olien, Donohue and Tichenor 1982, 84-85). Thus, while the status of the dominant power structure, as well as the media themselves, are to be reinforced as a consequence of the "law and order" news, through which hegemony of the state dominates over the public; those who challenge the JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION INQUIRY 20:1 (SPRING 1 99 6): 99-1 13