• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.70
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• pp.165-188
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• 2015

This paper deals with the questions: Are media user's activities labour? Or rent? These questions have provoked a debate in the critical media studies and Marx's theory. But it is not a matter of choosing either labour or rent. Even if user's activities could contribute to valorization, it needs some mediating process. Media Platforms-Google, Facebook, etc.-play a key role, and have to employ other forms of labour. Labour in media platform produces some capital commodities. In view of media platform, Smythe's audience commodity can be considered as capital commodity. Assertion in this paper expected to provoke new debate on media platforms and its labourer.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.70
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• pp.9-34
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• 2015

While dramatic shifts in the media environment underscore the emerging importance of structural approaches in media studies. political economists in Korea have failed to meet such demands. It is particularly noteworthy that their most serious weakness lies in economic theories. This paper aims to examine major problems in political economic approaches in Korea and suggest some research agenda and directions for the future. Above all, political economists need to scrutinize and elaborate both microscopic and macroscopic frameworks. On the microscopic level, they may learn tremendous implications from the "audience-commodity" thesis and recent debates on "information goods" among Korean economists. For the more macroscopic part, it is urgently needed to delve into mid-level issues that may illuminate specific ways the media capital operates: trends in the accumulation of capital, the influence of technological innovation, changes in the labor process, and the relations among production, circulation and consumption sectors.