The inaugural Political Economies of the Media postgraduate course held at the Inter-University Centre (IUC) in Dubrovnik in September 2023 was shaped by discussions around media ownership, labour, content, regulation, infrastructure, and everyday media practices. The event is co-organised by the Institute for Development and International Relations and the University of Ljubljana, which granted ECTS points to European attendees. The course was co-directed by Thomas Allmer (Paderborn University, Germany), Paško Bilić (Institute for Development and International Relations), Benjamin Birkinbine (University of Wisconsin, Osh-Kosh, USA), Jaka Primorac (Institute for Development and International Relations), Jernej A. Prodnik (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Toni Prug (University of Rijeka), and Sašo Slaček Brlek (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).
Selected summer school contributions by attending doctoral students are now published in a special issue of the open-access Political Economy of Communication journal, co-edited by the course directors and indexed in Scopus. Tobias Stadler (University of Oldenburg, Germany) situates digital capitalism within longue durée processes of capitalist transformation. Thomas Zenkl (University of Graz, Austria) proposes a tactical approach to algorithmic resistance through breaching methodologies. Igor Išpanović (University of Belgrade, Serbia) analyses journalistic precarity in the context of Serbia’s media landscape. Corinne Weinstein (Rutgers University, USA) critiques the neoliberal instrumentalisation of identity politics in American television. Collectively, these contributions by emerging scholars offer an interdisciplinary, critical map of media power, inequality, and resistance.
All articles are available here: https://www.polecom.org/index.php/polecom
