Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: This article reviews communication scholarship on the financial markets and the financial media since the 1980s.Although most work was published after the 2008 financial crisis (including six special issues in journalism and communication journals), the pre-crisis body of literature remains sizable.This article aims to summarize the body of literature pre-and post-crisis, draw themes from it, and stimulate scholars' interests by suggesting research directions.The International Journal of Communication (2010, vol.4) published a special section on the financial crisis after the 2008 meltdown.Five other communication journals-Cultural Studies (vol.24, no.3), Journal of Communication Inquiry (vol.34, no.4), Journalism (vol.14, no. 2), Popular Communication (vol.8, no.3), and Triple C: Cognition, Communication and Capitalism (vol.8, no.2)-also carried a special issue on the subject.Together, these six venues for communication and journalism scholarship published 55 articles by scholars based in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.The lively discussion in the special issues suggests that communication scholars have finally devoted adequate attention to the long-neglected area of financial media and markets.However, the discussion has largely ignored studies published before the meltdown.This may not be surprising, given that most work published before 2008 fell to the purview of journalism studies rather than critical/cultural communication studies.Similarly, post-2008 studies on financial journalism have seldom referred to studies from a critical/cultural perspective.The absence of cross-referencing between communication and journalism publications may reflect continuous fragmentation of the fields.This essay therefore has three objectives: to summarize studies on the financial media and the financial markets from a communication perspective since the 1980s, to categorize the studies according to the major themes emerging from them, and to stimulate scholarly interest in the subject by suggesting future directions.The starting point was chosen because financial markets' role in the economy and everyday life increased in importance as of the 1980s, when neoliberal policies began pressing individuals to invest in themselves by opening retirement accounts, borrowing money for education, and viewing a home as an asset.Besides, online databases rarely contain pre-1980s archives.The literature was gathered via a database search for the keywords "finance," "financial media," and "financial journalism."Also, literature was identified in the references of published work.The search excluded studies on business and economic news as well as those from a non-communication (e.g., sociological, economic, political, literary, finance) perspective.The studies presented here are thus
Author: Micky Lee
Institution: Suffolk University
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1603748606