Political economy of communications

Innis directly inspired Marshall McLuhan, a colleague of his at the University of Toronto, who would later be made famous for the dictum "the medium is the message".

Subsequent PEC approaches have been heavily influenced by Marxist thought and democratic politics, as it questions the powers residing within communications and the state necessary for democracy to be realized.

[5] Below the theories and their approaches are explained: Along with Innis and McLuhan, the political economy of communications was significantly impacted by economist Robert A. Brady’s teachings.

Brady initiated a search of social practices and emerging authoritarianism that were later explored by Dallas W. Smythe and Herbert I.

[8][9] Brady did not officially work with the structure of Marxist philosophy; he was rather focused on “the interaction of social and economic factors in a business.

[4] In 1988 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky produced the propaganda model to reflect how the political economy of mass communications operated in a more empirical capacity.

"[20] Propaganda model: affecting thoughts, using mass media to influence audiences with the desire to change their behaviors to be more in line with elite capitalist interests.