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Book Review: Media and Economics, Volume 1/1: Foundations of Media Economics: Communication and Media Science, Economics; Volume 1/2: Foundations of Media Economics: Sociology, Culture, Politics, Philosophy, International, History, Technology, Journalism

The fast evolving activities in the media economics research and teaching landscape are undoubtedly indicating the accruing establishment of this field. Surprisingly, introductory teaching books on media economics still seem not only to be rare but often too narrow in focus. Furthermore, publications terminologically and perspectively often reflect the adjacencies to a superior mother discipline, typically economics or communication/media science, making it especially difficult for beginners and laymen to get involved in the field. These mentioned shortcomings seem even more obvious when looking at available native publications for the German speaking and teaching language area. Identifying this lack, Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen (Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany) and Matthias Karmasin (University of Klagenfurt, Austria) took on the challenge of editing an ambitious and comprehensive book project still in progress. Media and Economics (original title: Medien und Ökonomie) is conceptualized in four volumes. The first two volumes (1/1 and 1/2) form a unit by focusing on the fundamentals and basic questions of media economics analysis. Volumes 3 and 4 concentrate on problems and application fields of media economics. Based on information from October 2004, the last volume still has not been published. The first volume (1/1) is split up into three major parts. The first part contains a single article on media economics from the very general perspective of the philosophy of science. Parts 2 and 3 take a close look at media economics from the views of the media science discipline and the economics discipline, respectively. The part of the book that focuses on economics consists of six articles and is twice as long as the media science outlook, which in comparison contains three articles. The second volume (1/2) is structured accordingly, but now introduces the perspectives from eight additional fields on the study of media economics. These single parts mostly cover only a single chapter of approximately same length and go about things from the standpoints of sociology, cultural science, political science, media philosophy, international perspective, history, technology, and journalism in detail. By presenting the various perspectives, the editors claim not only to give an overview of the diversity of the approaches, but also to provide access to the different and typical terminology in each case, their theories, models, and even their focal research interests. Despite the disparities, Altmeppen and Karmasin emphasize four guidelines in which all contributions of all volumes can be assigned. The first one corresponds to the level of analysis. Media economic analysis is usually located on the classical levels of analysis from individual (microlevel), organizational (mesolevel), to the societal level (macrolevel). The contributions underline a strong actual orientation on the mesolevel of media organizations regardless of their background as a rather communications/media science or economic investigation. This is even truer for pieces in business management, whereas classical economic attempts are still dominated from a microperspective or macroperspective. The second guideline is seen in the double entendre of functions, structures, actors, and activities of and in media. All contributions are embedded between the monetary and societal functions of media, economic, and communication structures (rules and resources) and how they are created, interpreted, changed, and (ab)used by actors such as media managers and journalists and their corresponding activities. The third guideline refers to “system and environment.” Particular elements of the