The Capability Approach in Media Policy

The Political Economy of Media Capabilities: The Capability Approach in Media Policy
Author(s): Michael Litschka

Source: Journal of Information Policy , 2019, Vol. 9 (2019), pp. 63-94
Published by: Penn State University Press
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The Political Economy of Media
Capabilities
The Capability Approach in Media Policy
Michael Litschka
ABSTRACT
In this article, the implications and application possibilities of the capability
approach by Amartya Sen for normative discussions about media policy are
explored. It gives an overview of some important streams of heterodox political-
economic approaches in economics and their role in a “mediatized” world and
centers on two concepts of major interest for media policies: the p
otential media
capabilities can have for media users in a mediatized economy, and the important
role of publicity and mass media when questions of justice are concerned. For
both issues, the capability approach offers interesting insights from a political-
economic perspective.
Keywords: capability approach, political economy, media policy, mediatization,
justice, mass media
This article is a contribution to media and communication science as a

normative discipline, that is, a discipline that aims not only at describ
ing and at explaining phenomena in media policy, media markets,
media use, and so on, but also at entering deeply discussed fields com-
prising value judgments. What, for example, is the role of journalism
and media companies in a “mediatized” economy,1 the acceptable degree
of concentration of media with regard to media diversity, the concep-
tion of justice in a world of pluralism (which is arguably influenced
by mass media communication), or the task of publicity mass media
often are connected with. These are only a few of the important issues
a normatively orientated media and communication science, especially
Michael Litschka: St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences
1. The section “The Political Economy of Media within a Mediatized Economy” depicts some
of the denotations of this term.
Journal of Information Policy, Volume 9, 2019

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-NC-ND

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64 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION POLICY
its subpart media economics would have to deal with, and certainly this
can only be done by including insights from other disciplines like ethics,
sociology, economics, and the like. There are three points to be made in
this wide context so that the aims of this article can be circumscribed
more exactly:
• The many economic, political, and ethical questions that come with a
“mediatized” economy ask for normative considerations—a task where
streams of normative and political-economic theories (diverse as they
may be) have their strengths.
• Amartya Sen’s capability approach2 is one well-received economic
(and ethical) theory grounded in social choice and political economy
especially apt to analyze the earlier mentioned themes in a media
economic context.
• A direct application of this approach would be to develop the concept of
media capabilities as enhancement of media competencies and similar
media pedagogic ideas. Questions of justice and the role of publicity in
justice discourses can also be enlightened by a political-economic appli-
cation of the capability approach within media.
The article proceeds as follows: The section “The Political Economy of
Media within a Mediatized Economy” describes normative implications
of a mediatized economy and differentiates between different approaches
of political economy. Normativity is seen as inherent feature in many
media economic approaches, be they classical or political economic in
their approach. “Sen’s Capability Approach as Social Choice Argument”
outlines the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen, shows how
it is footed in social choice thinking and what can be learned from it in
normative media and communication science. “Media Capabilities as
Media Policy Concept” explores one direct application of the capability
approach in media policy, namely the concept of media capabilities,
which has a bearing on individual media reception as well as on media
competencies of persons. “Justice and Publicity in Media: a Capability
Interpretation” builds on this concept by abstracting again to the social
(macro-) level of the economy and dealing with justice in a social choice
framework. It is shown how the concept of “publicity” connects with
justice and gives meaning to some media political debates on the role
2. For example, Sen, On Ethics and Economics; Idea of Justice.

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The Political Economy of Media Capabilities 65
and tasks of mass media in society. The summary concludes by rein-

forcing the argument for a normatively orientated media and commu-
nication science that uses economic and ethical reasoning to contribute
to political and social debates (e.g., on justice, publicity, and media
policy).
The Political Economy of Media within a Mediatized Economy
Mediatization as Encompassing Social Phenomenon
In Krotz,3 the following basic definition of mediatization in society is

given: During social developments, communication differentiates itself
through ever new media into many diverse forms. In this framework, it
is not the media who play the active part, but people and their dealing
with media; they constitute these changes by including ever more media
into ever more everyday actions and processes, and for them these ever
new media present ever more communicative possibilities and potentials,
which can be realized or not realized. For media economics, as far as it is
concerned with media organizations, this has important implications.4 The
process of mediatization (in an economic view) brings with it the search for
new kinds of value added based on media-related structures, in the form
of proceduralization and storage of knowledge, selection and p rocessing
of information, and convergence. In media economics, this value added
5
chain is described as making use of the Internet, mobile data communica-

tion, database systems, or intelligent interactive analysis tools, in order to
optimize processes (e-procurement, supply-chain m anagement), integrate
employees effectively (workflow management), open new channels to
clients (chat applications, e-service, e-commerce), reduce costs (customer
relationship management), and enlarge the knowledge of organizations
(e-learning, collaborative development, field force automation). The mode
of communication between organizations, in organizations, and out of
organizations (to stakeholders) is constantly evolving (with social networks
and social media grabbing their place).
3. Krotz, Die Mediatisierung kommunikativen.

4. Litschka and Karmasin, 223.
5. For example, Doyle.

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The mediatized company becomes a publicly exposed organization

determined by a recursive constitution of society and the organization
itself. Its boundaries and functions are not only determined by an efficient
allocation of resources, but also by communicative processes. As Litschka
and Karmasin6 put it: “The organization thereby becomes the coordina-
tor of a value-chain network; the ‘economization’ of the public sphere
(i.e. commoditization, marketization of social spheres, economical aspects
prevailing in/dominating the social spheres) corresponds to the publica-
tion of the economy, and the commercialization of the media corresponds
to the mediatization of commerce.” For media companies this means
that they do not only produce and distribute content, but dive into other
industries (trade and services), and for most companies this means they
become media companies in a specific (communicative) sense. They struc-
ture society via their dual organizational roles7: they produce social capital
by taking part in the public sphere and using the economics of attention;
they produce real capital by taking part in the social sphere and using the
economics of communication and production. Similar arguments can be
found in the political economy of media and communication of Babe,8
Knoche,9 or Mosco.10
Mediatization theory should be separated analytically from approaches
encompassing “Medialization” and active media use such as “Uses and
Gratifications.” Medialization11 is mostly concerned with institutional
questions of professional media use. It asks, for example, how digitalization
influences journalistic work. Social subsystems like politics, law, or sports
use strategies of attention like those in mass media to reach their respective
target groups. It is media logic used by actors outside the media system,
which becomes the basic pattern of social communication. Mediatization12
focuses on the individual media user and his or her relationship to media
technology. Private human to human, but also human to media commu-
nication and its inherent change of roles and actions (see the “prosumer”)
also leads to long-term adaptation processes, for example, when lay c ontent
producers use journalistic means based on the logic of attention. Active
6. Litschka and Karmasin, 223.

7. Ibid., 224.
8. Babe.
9. Knoche.
10. Mosco.
11. For example, Meyen.
12. For example, Krotz, Mediensoziologie.

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media use (or audience) theories argues that media audiences do not just
receive information passively but are actively trying in making sense of this
information taking into account their personal and social environment.
One example of these theories is the uses and gratifications approach,13
focusing on the idea that people choose media according to the satisfaction
of preferences they achieve or the utility a person derives from consuming
them.
Mediatization and medialization approaches have the advantage
(compared to theories of active media use) of depicting the social and
cultural changes brought about by the existence of more media, new
media, and adaptation of media use to media logic. In addition, the focus
on the institutionalized mesolevel of media organizations (and enterprises)
is important for the further development of media capabilities (see section
“Media Capabilities as Media Policy Concept”). This new point of view
within media use enriches the focus on the individual, which active media
use approaches possess as inherent feature.
In our context, another important point here is the rising power of
mediatized enterprises, which of course poses some ethical questions.
For example, one could ask about new forms of responsibility companies
should take over (as the corporate social responsibility [CSR] debate sug-
gests) or what the ultimate aim of a company should be (where shareholder
and stakeholder approaches seem to clash14). Interesting as that discourse
may be, I rather want to discuss some implications for media economics
as a normative discipline, paving the way for the social choice and justice
arguments to be made later.
Normativity in Media Economics
In view of the earlier described developments in the “media society,” what is

the role for normative media economics? According to Blaug,15 pure formal
economic models that make no use of value judgments (if that is possible
anyway) do not take into consideration more complex interdependencies
in the (media-) economy, and “economics throughout its long history
has been intimately connected with economic policy, with the desire to
13. For example, Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch.

14. See, for example, Freeman, “Divergent Stakeholder Theory”; “Managing for Stakeholders”;
Post, Preston, and Sachs.
15. Blaug, The Methodology of Economics, xxii.

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improve economic affairs, eradicate poverty, equalize the d istribution of

income and wealth, combat depressions, and so on.” After the marginalist
revolution at the end of the nineteenth century (represented by Menger,
Jevons, and Walras), when the rational choice paradigm and the homo
economicus principle invaded microeconomics,16 the understanding
of economics as a normative science changed a bit. Rationality became
substantive rationality of perfectly informed players.17 Economics as a
positive science, applying “as if ” hypotheses18 and being “wertfrei in the
Weber sense”19 was the reigning paradigm for a long time, but the arrival of
New Political Economy, while taking over the principles of methodological
individualism and economic rationality, made it possible again to incorpo-
rate insights from psychology or ethics and put institutions in the center
of analysis.20
Alleged freedom from value judgments in economic theory was often
based on Weber’s21 argument that empirical sciences cannot derive ideals
or norms, so the latter cannot be the object of scientific research. But
even without resorting to a sort of naturalistic fallacy, we can talk about
“ought,” and not only about “is,” as long as there is intersubjective under-
standing about value judgments, be it in the basic structure of research
(e.g., selection of problems, methods, basic hypotheses . . .), the field of
objects (e.g., media concentration, income distribution . . .), or the field
of propositions (e.g., that less media concentration implies more media
diversity). The important thing is to reveal one’s value judgments and
substantiate them. Blaug,22 for example, discusses the seeming objectivity
of the Pareto criterion as part of a “positive” economics. Not only are basic
assumptions, that make the criterion work, not very realistic (like given
consumer preferences, consumer sovereignty, inclusion of individual prefer-
ences only, unanimity when reallocating resources), there are also examples
for states of equilibrium with further Pareto improvements possible (as
the existence of rising demand curves with Giffen goods shows). It is also
important that we ask questions of power in market negotiations, or of a
priori endowments of individuals. Efficiency criteria are always a priori
16. Becker; Blaug, Disease of Formalism in Economics; Coleman and Fararo.

17. Blaug, 10f.
18. Friedman, 30.
19. Robbins, 42.
20. For example, Frey.
21. Weber, 149.
22. Blaug, Methodology of Economics, 124f.

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normative concepts, laden with value judgments. As Joan Robinson23 puts

it: “For to look at a system from the outside implies that it is not the only
possible system; in describing it we compare it (openly or tacitly) with
other actual or imagined systems. Differences imply choices, and choices
imply judgment. We cannot escape from making judgments and the
judgments that we make arise from the ethical preconceptions that have
soaked into our view of life and are somehow printed in our brains . . . But
we can go round about. We can see what we value, and try to see why.”
Fortunately, modern economics has taken seriously a lot of the men-
tioned criticisms (and beyond) and developed more realistic models in
the sense of being empirically valid, too. Prominent examples are new
institutional economics24 and behavioral economics.25 These approaches
depart from the pure economic man model and include knowledge from
psychology, ethics, and neighboring disciplines into economic analysis.
Experiments show the real-world behavior of people when economic
decisions are at stake and institutions are developed that may govern our
behavior in a socially accepted way. Neoclassical and Post-Keynesian eco-
nomics also include normative analyses, for example, in Welfare econom-
ics and its rich literature.26 The normativity inherent in these approaches
deals, for example, with social welfare functions, efficiency criteria like the
Pareto efficiency criterion and the utilitarian focus on (social) utility.
Of course, media economics needs to take into account such
considerations, too, and has done so to a considerable degree. While in
the German-speaking world, the neoclassical approach has not had the
same influence on media economics as in the Anglo-American world (due
to many reasons we have not the space to discuss, but probably mostly
because communication scientists make up the majority of researchers in
the field and because public regulation of media and public broadcasting
play a bigger role), some major textbooks could be classified as neoclassical
in approach.27 Picard28 describes the different research traditions in Europe
and the United States, calling the American approach “applied tradition,”
with a strong empirical background, and the European approach “critical
23. Robinson, 14.

24. Frey, Ökonomie ist Sozialwissenschaft; “Inspirierende Ökonomie und die Medien”;
Ostrom; Williamson, 185.
25. Fehr; Fehr, Falk, and Fischbacher.
26. See, for example, Arrow, Social Choice; Samuelson.
27. But see Kiefer for an approach using new institutional economics; for example, Heinrich.
28. Picard, “Comparative Aspects,” 18ff.

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tradition,” focusing more on theoretical (e.g., sociological and political)

aspects. Taking a (very short) look at some major British and American
textbooks, this account still seems valid: While Picard29 concentrates
on media markets and their description, using basic economic m odels,
Owen and Wildman30 focus on decision structures in certain media
markets. Alexander et al.31 and Albarran32 integrate industrial economic
nancial economic) approaches and Doyle33 mixes up classical and
(and fi
political-economic models to analyze the media industry. Whereas the neo-
classical approach dominates these publications, it has become standard to
at least allude to (sometimes even integrate) ideas from new institutional
economics, political economy, and critical (Marxist) theories. Examples
for some new publications doing so are Hardy34 or Cunningham et al.35
In the following, the major differences between streams of normative
media economics are worked out and the social choice paradigm to analyze
media economic phenomena is introduced.
Streams of Normative Media Economics
Following Seufert,36 the basic common core of heterodox theories of media

economics is their focus on interdependencies between the media system
and the political system.37 He describes the different methodological and
normative elements of political economy and new political economics by
linking them to the great paradigms in economic history, classical, and
neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics differs from its classical
predecessor in that it focuses on subjective valuations of goods and utility
maximization (instead of objective production values), mathematical
equilibrium analysis (instead of evolutionary processes), and microanalysis
(action) instead of macroanalysis (society).
29. Picard, Media Economics.

30. Owen and Wildman.
31. Alexander, Owers, and Carveth.
32. Albarran.
33. Doyle.
34. Hardy.
35. Cunningham, Flew, and Swift.
36. Seufert.
37. As far as this implies ethical deliberations on the role and responsibility of media and
their representatives within society, the analysis of concepts like publicity and justice, or founda-
tional critique on economic imperialism in media economics, this definition is sufficing for the
purpose of this article.

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New political economics (and new institutional economics) criticizes

some assumptions of neoclassical economics as unrealistic and has devel-
oped approaches like principal–agent theory, transaction cost theory, and
constitutional economics, all of which deny basic tenets of neoclassical
models like complete information or rationality of agents, while sharing
others like methodological individualism and the important role of incen-
tives. Within media economics this leads to research on media institutions,
public media goods, financing systems of media content, incentive sys-
tems for media production, and the like.38 Parts of this stream even analyze
“just” systems of media production and consumption or the distribution
of media goods. Classical political economy on the other hand orientates
itself more toward the “classical” goal of explaining the nature of social
welfare and historical developments of power and distribution of wealth. It
mostly takes a critical stance toward the current state of a media economy
and its prevailing power system. Power differentials in the media system,
distribution of media access and participation chances, differences between
social “classes,” and the dynamics of income situations and media concen-
tration are central to this stream.39 This can be further differentiated into
a liberal stream in the Smith/Ricardo tradition, a Marxist stream, and an
(old) institutional stream like in Veblen’s writings (see Meier 2003 for this
classification). Classical political economy of media is basically opposed to
the concept of a “market place of ideas”40 in which those opinions “win”
which get the highest demand by the public and only the free access to the
market of opinions is necessary to reach an efficient allocation of content
production and distribution (of political information). This kind of politi-
cal entrepreneurship (also to be found in Down’s theory of public choice41)
will not work, according to this stream, because the basic prerequisites of
such a market are not given (because of, e.g., informational constraints,
constraints on rationality, unequal distribution of media access and media
power, to name a few). Critical political economy would rather analyze
the role of media as producers of ideology and representatives of partial
interests.42 The oligopolistic structure of many media industries supports
this proposition, as collusive behavior is made easier in such structures.
38. For example, Frey, “Inspirierende Ökonomie und die Medien.”

39. For example, Knoche and Siegert.
40. Coase.
41. See Downs.
42. Seufert, 39.

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Finally yet importantly, we could include social choice frameworks into

these alternative streams of economics. Miller43 discusses the possibilities
of social choice thinking when he compares deliberative democracy with
liberal democracy. While the former wants to reach an agreed judgment
on policy after a process of open discussion, the latter sees the a ggregation
of individual preferences to form a social utility function as political task.
Social choice theory can identify problems with aggregation formulas
(e.g., the arbitrariness of decision rules or the vulnerability to strategic
voting) and shed light on the discursive processes that are so important in
most democratic theories. As such it may pave the way for a concept of
publicity, which will be discussed in the following. Even within a delibera-
tive setting, it may be possible to apply social choice models, for example,
to vary the decision rule according to the nature of the issue to be decided.
This variability in information gathering and decision processes (and the
inclusion of communicative aspects) is what differentiates Sen’s capability
approach from other social choice approaches and also from those theories
focusing on the one “correct” decision rule (like Rawls’ decision princi-
ples). I can now proceed to depict Sen’s ideas in more detail.
Sen’s Capability Approach as Social Choice Argument
Amartya Sen’s capability approach is a widely discussed alternative to util-

itarian and rational choice models in economics and reintroduces ethical
and communicative considerations into economic theory. This section
gives a short account of this theory, hinting at concepts media economics
may use when taking a normative, political stance toward central issues in
its discipline. Two specific applications of his approach, the development of
media capabilities and the connections between justice, publicity, and social
choice, will be depicted in sections “Media Capabilities as Media Policy
Concept” and “Justice and Publicity in Media: a Capability Interpretation.”
The Problem of Rational Choice
Sen starts his theorizing with a question that already puzzled Adam
Smith44 as one of the central problems in economics: does the pursuit
of one’s own interests contribute to social welfare or does it destroy the
43. Miller.
44. Smith, Wealth of Nations.

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“bonum commune”? While mainstream economists answer this question

in the positive, at least as long as some basic prerequisites of competition
are met (like private means of production, free markets and free access to
markets, atomistic utility maximizing, complete information of market
participants, a functioning price system, etc.), arguing with the efficiency
argument provided by Pareto, Sen believes that only very limited models
enter this kind of economic analysis, not providing enough information
for the economist to judge a situation properly.45 Specifically Sen criti-
cizes “Revealed Preference Theory” and “Rational Choice Theory” for their
belief that a complete ordering of preferences and internal consistency of
choice would represent the real “utility” of a person. “. . . this approach
presumes both too little and too much: too little because there are
non-choice sources of information on preference and welfare as these
terms are usually understood, and too much because choice may reflect a
compromise among a variety of considerations of which personal welfare
may be just one.”46
This argument, derived from Sen’s former mathematical work on social
choice and various “impossibility theorems,”47 has a lot of implications for
many economic situations, in our context of media economics we could,
for example, use it to doubt the basic proposition of the “uses and grati-
fications” approach (see, e.g., Blumler and Katz 1974 for an overview or
Katz and Foulkes 1962 for “escapist” uses of media) that people choose
media offerings according to the utility they derive from consuming them.
“In the mass communication process much initiative in linking need
gratification and media choice lies with the audience member.”48 This stress
on the ability of the recipient to rationally choose media offers and link
the satisfaction of needs (within a complete preference ordering) to the
foreseen (and calculated) consequences of consuming them fits well into a
neoclassical rationality model of the media user. It is very doubtful though,
from the perspective of the capability approach, that users show their true
preferences either through their willingness to pay or any other method
of consistent rational choosing (or preference ordering), because of two
problems: Firstly, they may have needs they cannot express via their choos-
ing behavior, for example, because the respective offer does not exist, or
45. It is important to see here that it is not the unrealistic assumptions of neoclassical
economics that bother Sen, but the lack of information neoclassical models provide.
46. Sen, “Rational Fools,” 92f.
47. One of the best known being Arrow’s impossibility theorem (see Maskin and Sen).
48. Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch, 21.

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because it is encoded and expensive to reach, or because the necessary

“consumption capital”49 is missing. Secondly, there are motives to be
found in the user’s behavior, which do not enter personal welfare (i.e., the
personal utility function), like the care for the well-being of others. So
some basic assumptions of the uses and gratifications approach, like
• The recipient as active person deciding if a communication process
develops.
• The recipients being able to declare their aims, preferences, and utilities
when being asked.
• Recipients being able to fully understand their media use and the
ensuing categories of their motives represent this understanding.
Do not fit into this first basic tenet of Sen’s research, namely that the
motives of choosing are far more complex than economic rationality (or
any utility functions) can ever grasp, and that some of these motives will
never arise in the course of choosing something, because basic require-
ments for that to be possible are missing in real life (see in the following
for a more detailed account and examples of this argument).
Seen like this, this critique on the “uses and gratifications approach”
(and similar consumer-orientated theories) goes beyond traditional
criticisms,50 that media recipients do not have a free and self-responsible
role, but get “functional” utility out of their media consumption. This is
utility outside one’s definition power, exemplified by physical well-being,
adaptation to environments, and other more socially orientated goals. The
capability approach would not only deem such definitional imponder-
ability problematic, but also the lack of focus on process features (and
possibilities to choose seen as freedoms). Also, the concept of media
competencies (see Moser51 for a critique) would fall under this perspective
(that not enough information is conveyed by it and individually focused
analyses will not suffice). Seen as ability for media critique, knowledge
about media, their system and use, knowledge of media production, inter-
mediation of communication, and other elements in the history of media
pedagogy, media competencies are an important part in media economic
analysis, but not sufficiently engaged in rationality, choice, and freedoms
(see section “Media Capabilities as Media Policy Concept” on how media
capabilities could clarify some of these questions).
49. Kiefer, 178.

50. For example, Sander and Vollbrecht.
51. Moser, 241ff.

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Sen exemplifies the basis of these problems with two concepts represent-
ing the motives and decisions of persons and their connection with eco-
nomic utility: Sympathy (the care for other persons’ utility influences the
own welfare) and commitment (one cares for other persons’ welfare w ithout
being worse off if one doesn’t). “While sympathy relates similar things to
each other—namely, welfares of different persons—commitment relates
choice to anticipated levels of welfare.”52 So it is not necessarily a mistaken
anticipation of foreseen consequences that a person chooses an alternative
that does not maximize his or her own utility. Seen like that only sympathy
can be modeled into a rational choice structure, but not commitment (as
contra preferential action). A simple example is given by Sen53: Two boys
find two apples of different sizes. Boy A tells boy B to choose. B chooses
the bigger apple and A takes this to be unfair. After B asks why this is so
and which apple A would have chosen, A claims he would have taken the
smaller apple. Of course B says that everything is fine, as this is the exact
outcome! The problem is that A would have lost less by B’s choice if his
(A’s) hypothetical choice of the smaller apple had been one of sympathy
and not commitment. The outcome of such a bargain, even if fulfilling the
“revealed” preferences, is not satisfying for the participants if the process
toward this outcome hurts some basic concepts of fairness (in this case:
commitment). We have to ask ourselves how moral considerations can enter
one preference ordering, if basically there are many preference orderings,
some of them not built up considering personal welfare maximization.
The Problem of Utility and Capabilities
Accepting these limitations of rational choice and economic rationality,

the next step is a critique on utilitarianism as basis of economic evalua-
tions. This ethical theory has three components54:
• Welfarism: The goodness of a state of affairs is a function of the utility
information about this state.
• Sum-Ranking: The utility information can only be judged by the sum
of utility of the state.
• Consequentialism: Each choice is determined by the goodness of the
subsequent results.
52. Sen, “Rational Fools,” 95.

53. Ibid., 97.
54. Sen, On Ethics and Economics, 39.

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There are two problems with these elements according to Sen55: The
so-called “well-being” aspect of a person, that is, the personal utility she
or he gains from an action is overemphasized, while the “agency” aspect
of this same person, that is, his or her ability to build goals and values
without drawing utility from that, is not included. Secondly, utility as
basis for well-being is interpreted as “state of happiness,” or “satisfaction of
wants,” which abstracts from the social situation an individual finds itself
in. A beggar would be satisfied with less incremental growth of happiness
than a rich person, without it being possible to give the same little weight
to a corresponding loss of well-being. There simply are social contingencies
that distort implications of “utility,” and all this seems to be a very poor
informational basis of a normative theory like utilitarianism.56
Utilitarianism has had a long tradition in Anglo-American media
economics and philosophy. The stress on individual freedoms, the

principle of “one voice-one vote,” the “highest happiness possible,” the
consequentialist view of actions and rules, and the maximization of
individual p references are principles often found in English and American
media systems, media codices or media textbooks.57 This basically logical
structure of utilitarian thought has its limits in today’s media landscape, as
Christians58 shows with some examples. The consequences of blogging, for
example, are not assessable in an empirically sound way. Also, motivations
of people to act ethically are not to be calculated in a one-dimensional goal
structure (or, as Sen would say, preference ordering). Distributional equity,
freedom from violence, the keeping of a promise, and so on, are important
motivational factors not easily mapped in utilitarian models. Obligations
of individuals, the embedding of individuals in a responsive media society
(see the discussion of mediatization earlier), and mass media as social insti-
tutions not to be changed by isolated individual decisions are all factors
only deontological (and discursive) theories can deal with. Christians59 also
doubts the concept of impartiality and objectivity in journalism as part of
utilitarian thinking in media and communication science60: “Objectivity
as a one-dimensional framework of rational and moral validation accounts
for some of the goods we seek in community, such as minimal harm,
55. Ibid., 41.

56. Sen, Ökonomie für den Menschen, 73.
57. Christians.
58. Ibid., 120ff.
59. Ibid., 126.
60. However, the “impartial spectator” in Sen’s approach has another role, see in the following.

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but those issues outside the objectivity calculus are excluded from the
decision making process. The way power and ideology influence social
and political institutions, including the press, is largely ignored.”
The capability approach claims to overcome such shortcomings61 by
giving more consideration to the value of freedoms and the ability to
convert freedoms into outcomes (“capability”). Freedom is not only a goal
to be reached (which it may be in utilitarian teleological theories), but also
a deontological category with value in itself. It gives us alternatives from
which we can choose, and even if we do not make use of these possibilities,
we are better off having them. This is another instance where the “process”
of getting anywhere is valuable itself, not only the outcome of actions.
Freedom therefore has two components62:
• Chances: Freedom helps us to reach those goals that we choose.
• Procedure: Freedom gives us disposal of possibilities to choose, no
matter what kind of choice we actually make.
As Sen63 puts it: “If this rights-based‚ ‘procedural’ view is accepted, then
the traditional assessment of the merits and demerits of the market, in
terms of the goodness of outcomes, would be quite misplaced. The moral
necessity of having markets would follow from the status of rights and not
from the efficiency or optimality of market outcomes.” The first approxi-
mation to capabilities therefore is to see them as freedom to choose from
various alternatives. These possibilities will always be underestimated in a
system where individual utilities are calculated,64 and the more unequal
the distribution of incomes and possibilities, the less useful a utilitarian
analysis of economic situations. Our ability to convert resources into goals
(“functionings,” as Sen calls them65) is determined by age, gender, genetic
dispositions, and handicaps, among others; the probability that an equal
distribution of basic goods66 will lead to equal chances for individuals to
convert them into functionings is low. Freedom is connected with goals
and means, and neither equality of goals, nor of means will guarantee
equal freedoms.67 As Sen says: “This procedure can be improved upon by
61. In Sen and Williams further limitations of utilitarianism are analyzed.

62. Sen, “The Possibility of Social Choice,” 198f.
63. Sen, “The Moral Standing,” 4.
64. Sen, Inequality Reexamined, 55.
65. See Sen, Ökonomie für den Menschen, 96.
66. Rawls, A Theory of Justice.
67. Sen, Inequality Reexamined, 85ff.

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taking note not only of the ownership of primary goods and resources,
but also of interpersonal differences in converting them into the capability
to live well . . . This approach focuses on the substantive freedoms that
people have, rather than only on the particular outcomes with which they
come up.”68
Some Examples
Let’s take as example a very poor person and compare him to a rich
person; both have the same amount of a specific bundle of goods and
follow the same goals when using these goods. In the capability approach,
this amounts to wanting to reach the same “functionings.” These can range
from basic nutritional or housing needs to more complex combinations of
wants like participating in political processes as democratically orientated
citizens. The freedoms and chances to really reach these goals can differ a
lot between these two persons, even though they possess the same bundle
of goods. In mathematical language, this means that the factual combina-
tion of functionings of a person represents the actual achievements of this
person, whereas the quantity of alternative combinations of functionings,
among which people have the freedom choose, represent capabilities.69
This possibility to choose has also intrinsic value: one can starve while
fasting or one can starve because one is forced to. In the first case you have
a choice, in the second case you don’t.
In his empirical research, Sen70 shows that the consideration of
possibilities to choose in economic policy might have direct positive
consequences for the standard of living in a country, independent of
traditional welfare factors like the gross domestic product (GDP). An
open educational policy for instance that improves the “capability” to
reach specific functionings in professional life, may also result in higher
life expectancy rates or participation rates in democratic processes, even
though GDP may be lower in this specific country. But social questions
like that do not depend only on welfare measures like GDP, but also on
some important social institutions that enlarge freedoms and capabilities
68. Sen, “The Possibility of Social Choice,” 192.

70. Ibid., 34f.

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to reach a healthy and long life (as wanted functioning), among them
health insurance, school education, and similar social measures.
The enlargement of freedoms within the capability approach is therefore
not only the most important means, but also the aim of economic and
social policy, because it comprises three effects71:
• A direct effect on well-being and freedom.
• An indirect effect on social change.
• An indirect effect on economic growth.
Limits of the Capability Approach—Some Criticisms
The capability approach has been criticized by several scholars from

economics or philosophy on the grounds of being paternalistic or of
taking the comparative view (see also in the section “Comparative Justice”)
too far.
The paternalist critique can be found, for example, in Sugden72: If
public reasoning about what is good for people calls for policies that
promote opportunity through restrictions on liberty, there might ensue a
system of democratic control. Sugden aligns this criticism alongside fears
that some findings of behavioral economics (see, e.g., the “nudging” ideas
in Thaler and Sunstein 2008) also induce too much intervention from the
government (or other superior entities beyond the individual) in a system
basically consisting of liberties. We may want to distinguish here between
negative (absence of coercion) and positive (concrete, enabling) liberties.
If government intervention enhances positive liberties, the critique still has
to be taken seriously but the system of justice devised by Sen (with strong
reference to Rawlsian justice) relies strongly on such positive liberties.
The comparative view within the capability approach concerns the
principle(s) of justice we should embrace. While, for example, Rawlsian
justice relies on an agreed upon set of principles leading to a “perfectly”
just society, Sen wants us to take on a comparative view, comparing states
of justice within a society.73 In Valentini,74 it is argued that “perfect” justice
71. Ibid., 351f.

72. Sugden, “Why Incoherent Preferences”; “Opportunity as Mutual Advantage.”
73. For a more detailed account, see section “Comparative Justice.”
74. Valentini.

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has its own merits and that Rawlsian justice may very well lead to compar-
ative judgments. Also, she claims that Sen’s critique on Rawls’ theory being
restricted to the domestic (national) realm is misguided because there may
be normative and empirical reasons for a theory of justice to be limited
in that way. Lastly, Sen’s claim that the developed principles of justice are
unrevisable once they are agreed upon, may be wrong considering the fact
that Rawls devised his “reflective equilibrium” partly as dynamic process:
“When trying to reach reflective equilibrium, we have to go back and
forth between general principles and considered judgements in search for
overall balance. Within this process, we are constantly faced precisely with
those decisions about what to revise, and why, which Sen sees as never
arising within a ‘transcendental’ approach to justice.”75
While it would be far beyond the scope of this article to explore these
problems in more detail, it is important to recognize this critique on Sen for
it may be that he criticizes Rawlsian justice on the ground of mis- (or over-)
interpreting it. Considering these difficulties, we can now try to apply the
approach to media policy. I believe that the criticisms, important as they
may be for theoretical debates about the scope of theories of justice, do not
limit the possibilities of so-called “media capabilities” in the media world.
Media Capabilities as Media Policy Concept
We are now well equipped to apply the concept of capabilities to media

policy. Let’s start by interpreting “capability” on an individual level as
“media competency,” that is, an ability to choose and (prod-) use the
media offer we deem apt to fulfill our needs. We have therefore the pos-
sibility (and the consumption capital) to deal with media goods in a
self-determined way in order to raise our well-being. This ability would
then directly enter our utility function, which amounts to stressing the
“chances aspect” of media capabilities. The functionings we might reach
with these competencies may be, for example, the status as a well-educated
and well-informed person, a better social status, or simply a higher salary
in one’s job.
75. Ibid., 313.

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As we are not only utility orientated according to the capability

approach, we are also interested in the agency aspect of possible media
capabilities, or the process aspect of reaching one’s goals. It is also the
possibilities of choice and the multitude of functionings (or combi-
nations of functionings) we might reach (but need not actually reach),
which count. For instance, we might be interested in participating in
democratic election processes and political discourses, possibilities that
make us complete as a person and can be very reasonable, but needn’t be
rational in an economic sense, as they do not enter our utility functions.
We need other concepts than utility to explain this phenomenon, and
media economics as normative undertaking should include such con-
cepts76 in its analysis: take, for example, “commitment,” meaning the
following of individual or group rules (to contribute to democratic values
in one’s country as a more informed person) no matter if they are of direct
“use” for us at that specific point of time.
An interpretation of capability not only as “ability” or “competency,”
but also as “being enabled to do something” means we have to abstract
from the individualistic level and include media pedagogic and media
policy elements, as well as the aforementioned media literacy concepts.
In order to have such possibilities (and multitudes) of choice there is
first the need for a critical mass of media diversity representing the most
diverse points of view and values (see also the following discussion of
justice), second the need for a basic education for the consumption of
media, to be able to build up the necessary consumption capital. This
task cannot be taken over by the individual alone but lies in the social-
ization that parents, school, universities, and the like provide. In addi-
tion, the responsibility of media enterprises must be addressed, as they
often decide upon our chances to get access to media products, influ-
ence our world views through public relations (PR) and advertising and
concentrate media power in a few p latforms, as the example of plat-
form enterprises like Google show (see also the section “Mediatization
as Encompassing Social Phenomenon” for the mesolevel of company
responsibility). Only the enabling of people to really use their possi-
bilities of choice in the media economy, that is, real media capabilities
76. An empirical survey of some of these concepts (e.g., commitment, reciprocity, and
fairness) can be found in Litschka et al.

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as realization chances, will convert basic rights and freedoms of media

usage into functionings. We can depict this connection in Figure 1:
figure 1 Media Capabilities as Media Economic Concept.
Of course the discipline of media pedagogy is itself concerned with some

of these issues, especially the “ability” and “competence” of individuals to
sensibly and rationally consume media, but maybe up till now has been
focused too much on the individual level and exemplary “misbehavior”
of media or journalists or consumers. In some standard books on media
pedagogy like Moser,77 the intermediation of media competencies should
be aligned along the following aspects:
• Adolescents need not be shown an original reality behind a virtual one
constructed by media, but need to learn to select and understand the
codes of media.
• Interests and intentions behind this construction process of media
should be analyzed.
• The ahistorical presence of media must be changed insofar, as h
istorical
developments of, for example, a specific news production or media
structure should be explained.
All of this is going beyond the individual level, including social
developments, but may be neglecting the importance of deconstructing
77. Moser, 77.

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the alleged rationality of media consumption and also the importance of

freedoms and real possibilities of choice consumers may (and should) have.
Media competencies can also be connected to media literacy.
Buckingham,78 for example, developed key concepts as a theoretical
framework: Production, language, representation, and audience. They
refer to the active production of media texts, the representation of
reality by media, and the debate about diverse audiences and their media
use. Jenkins79 demands a set of “new media literacies” being defined as
cultural competencies and social skills, where collaboration and network-
ing become more important and where a specific “participatory culture”
can emerge. While there are other media literacy approaches (see Share
2002 for an overview), it seems clear that in these concepts the importance
of “enabling” people to sensibly and responsibly deal with media becomes
greater. They transcend the notion of well-being in Sen’s connotation and
pave the way for including the agency aspect of media capabilities. However,
the explicit political (or political economic, for that matter) notion of Sen’s
approach may help us to see the wider meaning of media capabilities not
only for media use, but also for (see section “Justice and Publicity in Media:
a Capability Interpretation”) justice and publicity considerations.
Lastly, there seem to be some implications for media accountability,
understood as “voluntary or involuntary processes by which the media
answer directly or indirectly to their society for the quality and/or con-
sequences of publication.”80 On the institutional level accountability
is a process “by which media organizations may be expected or obliged
to render an account of their activities to their constituents.”81 To raise
media capabilities on the (meso) institutional level, in this understand-
ing, entails enhancing professional accountability (e.g., sticking to codes of
conduct), public accountability (e.g., fulfilling a public educational task),
market accountability (e.g., regard for demand supply relations), and
political accountability (e.g., keeping to national and international law82).
Co-regulatory measures directing the media industry toward such behav-
ior can only be seen positively when applying the capability approach to
media organizations. As this article focuses on the political (macro) level,
the next section suggests a second application possibility to mass media
and their role for justice considerations.
78. Buckingham.
79. Jenkins.
80. Mulgan, 207.
81. Pritchard, 2.
82. Painter-Morland.

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Justice and Publicity in Media: a Capability Interpretation
Comparative Justice
A second important issue in media policy, where the capability approach

is useful, is the discourse on justice and its connection with the concept
of publicity. While both topics are discussed in many fields (among them
ethics, communication science, political science), and it is not possible
to give a complete account of this complicated discussion in the space
provided here, the goal is to give a capability and social choice interpre-
tation of justice and publicity and show their scope in current political
economy of media.
As the capability approach (itself an offspring of Sen’s former social
choice research) has shown us, questions of social choice, as soon as
normative issues are involved, cannot be decided on the basis of individual
preferences, however they may be revealed.83 Only communicative reason
and the public discussion and defense of arguments will lead us to a better
(and more encompassing) understanding of justice. Sen84 depicts an
important dichotomy in the history of justice: one tradition of thought,
starting with Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and leading to current phi-
losophers like Rawls, Nozick, or Gauthier, focuses on institutions that
shall secure just rules for society. Sen calls this tradition “transcendental
institutionalism,”85 because it purports an ideal situation, where there is
no empirical examination of actual facts; it suffices to follow some ideal
and just rules (like the Rawlsian principles) arising out of virtual contracts.
Justice is, in a way, perfect and complete; we do not need to compare
different principles of justice any more (that has been done before the
social contract comes into being), and we do not look at factual ways of
life of different people or the possibilities they actually have. The correct
institutions provide the correct behavior of people and they will act justly
if society is ordered according to the respective principles.
The second, in the eye of Sen more promising, tradition comprises
comparative approaches concentrating on social implementations (the
effects of institutions and the actual behavior of persons). This tradition
started with Smith, Condorcet, Bentham, Mill, later on Marx, and today

84. Sen, Idea of Justice.
85. Ibid., 33ff.

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is represented by some social choice theorists like Sen himself. They do

not look after a perfect society but compare actual societies according to
social achievements. The aim is to lessen unjust situations, not to reach
perfectly just situations.86 Only this view can, according to Sen, give
concrete standards for comparing alternatives and examining social states
after institutions are established. This outcome-orientated view lends itself
to economic analysis (and it might be a strength of social choice meth-
odology to assess consequences of our decisions in a rigorous way) and
might look utilitarian at first sight, but this would be shortsighted: Firstly,
utilitarianism (as described earlier) focuses too much on “utility,” secondly,
Sen pays attention to the process of reaching such verdicts within social
choice approaches by including the concept of publicity. Before we ana-
lyze this concept in more detail, let us have a look at some of the possible
advantages, in Sen’s view, of the “comparative” (instead of the “transcen-
dental”) view:
• We can compare different situations according to their status of being
just or unjust.
• Actual social improvements are analyzed.
• Most of contractarian theories focus on one (home) country, letting the
viewpoints of other nations out of sight—a closed society view may be
provincial.
• People may choose very diverse principles of justice in an original state,
because even very well-reasoned norms and values are pluralist.
• People can be “unreasonable” even after reaching an agreement on the
perfectly just society.
Apart from possible critiques on that view about justice (see section
“Limits of the Capability Approach—Some Criticisms”), it is important to
keep in mind that many alternative theories of justice exist. Of course, it
would be impossible to compare all of them in one article, let alone discuss
them in detail; the following approaches could also be used when a society
seeks a common (public) understanding of justice.
Liberal (or libertarian) theories of justice stress the importance of
individual (and negative) freedoms and the minimal role of the state when
questions of distribution or institutions furthering the possibilities of peo-
ple are concerned. Examples are Nozick87 and his approach of voluntary
86. Ibid., 37.

87. Nozick.

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transactions and just distributions or Hayek88 and his evolutionary ethics,

where efficient norms and rules arise out of a system of natural evolu-
tion based on individual freedoms. Liberal theories of ethics are not so
much concerned with social justice through the distribution of basic goods
or positive freedoms like the right to work. It would therefore not be
appropriate to apply them to an issue of media capability or publicity (see
section “The Role of Mass Media and Publicity”), because those concepts
need enabling and policy intervention of some kind.
Contractualist (and contractarian) theories try to establish ethical
norms out of rationality through hypothetical contracts arising from an
original state.89 There must be universal consent about this norms based
on mutual advantages for all participants. The latter is one of the basic
differences to discourse ethics, where no such advantages (only the power
of the stronger argument) are necessary. In its universalist form (con-
tractualism), consent is reached by an impartial weighting of stakes and
reasons of all participants; there are various conceptions of the good based
on reasonable pluralism.90 In its rational-individualistic form (contractar-
ianism), consent arises out of utility maximization; the important found-
ing concepts are “impartiality” (through the claim to equal concessions91)
and “efficiency” (through a process where no one can be made better off
without making someone worse off92). While better apt to tackle the
issue of media capabilities than liberal approaches, and while including a
profound understanding of publicity, fairness, and reciprocity,93 social
contract theory makes comparisons between actual states of justice more
difficult. The outcome orientated and comparative view of Sen’s approach
seems to be better applicable to the media policy questions negotiated in
this article, because, as will be explained in the next section, comparisons
are vital to the analysis of publicity and mass media’s role in providing it.
Besides utilitarian and deontological theories (for a comparison and pos-
sible limits of pure forms of those theories94), we might also address ourselves
toward discourse ethical theories. Those ideas, first developed by Apel95 and
88. Hayek.
89. Kersting.
90. Rawls, Gerechtigkeit als Fairness.
91. See Gauthier.
92. See Singer.
93. Rawls, Gerechtigkeit als Fairness.
94. See Karmasin and Litschka, 62–69.
95. Apel.

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Habermas,96 stress the importance of publicity as public reasoning. It is not

about legitimacy through interests of parties, but legitimacy through argu-
ments within an ideal communication society. The concept of publicity is
an intersection between Kantian, Rawlsian, discourse ethical and capability
considerations and is connected to “comparative” justice in the next sec-
tion. As the idea of this article is the development of media capabilities and
the explanation of the role of mass media for comparative justice, for the
remainder of the text we will stick to Sen’s capability approach.
The Role of Mass Media and Publicity
The consequences from a “comparative” view of justice for media econo-

mists, policy consultants, media analysts, or politicians dealing with media
regulation are multifaceted. First, we must allow for interpersonal compari-
sons of utility, something economics has been dealing with in social choice
theories.97 As far as results like Arrow’s impossibility theorem are concerned,
such imponderability can be dealt with by letting as much information as
possible enter our decision processes. Interpersonal comparisons of well-
being and relative advantages of persons are part of this calculation.98 This
need for additional information is also the foremost reason for stressing the
importance of “publicity,” which Habermas99 defined as public reasoning
and defense of arguments in the unlimited public.100 Sen101 connects this
concept with impartiality: Objectivity is necessary for communication and
the language of publicly used reason, and therefore also for ethical evaluations
including impartiality. Obviously, Sen argues for a central role for an impar-
tial spectator, introduced before by Smith102 in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Only this procedure can, according to Sen, integrate all possible viewpoints,
and not only those of a local community (or a nation state, as with Rawls).
Now if only publicity and the public use of reason give us the objectivity
necessary to evaluate normative criteria like justice, and if media econom-
ics is entangled with discourses on publicity (and, for that matter, with
96. Habermas, Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik.

97. For example, Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values; Sen, Collective Choice.
98. See Arrow (“Social Responsibility,” 140ff) for economic inefficiencies arising out of lack
of information; Sen, Idea of Justice, 121.
99. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns.
100. See also Ulrich.
101. Sen, Idea of Justice, 149.
102. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

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information and communication and their respective problems in the

media economy, see the formation of prices, trust goods, media concen-
tration, and media diversity, to name just a few), the role of mass media in
that context seems to be even more pivotal. To include the viewpoints of
“others” and discuss the universality of formerly regional social contracts,
coverage must be above the provincial level and help finding “objective”
evaluations of social states, based on publicly deliberated judgments, and
not on privately deliberated social conventions. It is therefore consistent
for Sen to address the role of global media (and the chances of overcoming
this shortage) in enlarging the limits of justice.103
Public reasoning therefore is the keystone of democracy and the
true embodiment of reason, as opposed to rationality. While rationality
demands, we can argue our reasons in front of ourselves (critical self-
reflection),104 reason demands our arguments hold in front of all others
(critical public examination). Maybe this is one of the advantages of
the capability approach (applied to justice) compared to social contract
theories: the latter deem cooperative behavior possible only when strate-
gic and mutual advantages are involved, the former accounts for asym-
metric relationships where power is limited according to certain rules (see
the discussion on commitment earlier). Also, it may better account for
opinions of persons not directly involved in the interaction,105 which may
give us a better understanding of some political discourses, for example, in
social media and their possible detrimental consequences for democratic
values. In this sense democracy and justice share some discursive elements,
because justice can only be evaluated by public reasoning and public
reasoning can only be possible in democratic situations with free media,
freedom of speech and opinion, free elections, and fairly distributed access
to information. Sen106 sees the following contributions of the global press
(as important representative of global mass media) to public reasoning,
and therefore clear objectives of media policies based on capabilities:
• Freedom of press (as well as of speech and opinion) enhances our
well-being directly, as it helps us tackle our “Lebenswelt” (a Habermas
term meaning our experience and understanding determined by how,
when, and where we live).
• It gives us information for our examination of the arguments of others.
103. Sen, Idea of Justice, 201.

104. And this may involve much more than just personal utility, as argued earlier.
105. Sen, Idea of Justice, 234f.
106. Ibid., 361f.

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• It supports the disadvantaged by publicly criticizing the situation.

• It helps us building values through open discourse; values that are
always diverse and pluralist because multiple preference systems may
be equally valid.
• It supports justice through discussion, and no other kind of justice is
possible in Sen’s democratically orientated paradigm.
While it is true that some of these conclusions can be arrived at with
other normative underpinnings, like, for example, those of liberal theories
of the press, maybe even starting with Mill’s liberalism (see Ward107 for
an historical account of the connection of liberalism and the press), it
seems to me that the capability approach (with its inherent economic logic
of social choice) gives us more theoretical fodder for policy issues, like,
for example, the task of media policy to enhance media capabilities. It
shows the importance of a “process-orientated” view and does not place
so much responsibility on the individual’s shoulder, but stresses meso- and
macrolevel responsibilities. Also, former utilitarian (and Rawlsian) theories
used in media economics and media ethics may have missed the chances
arising out from the comparative view of justice Sen proposes. We might
use these points to address two issues of current relevance to media policy:
The rising economic pressure for many (journalistic) media and the rise of
illiberal media systems in some parts of the world.
The first issue is stemming from the economic effects of platform enter-
prises: As companies like Google or Facebook can make use of network
and scale effects, they are able to almost monopolize part of their business
model, firmly “lock-in” their customer base, gain ever more data volume
about their preferences and therefore gain more and more of advertising
income. This makes it harder for traditional media products like news-
papers to finance the (expensive) quality journalism needed for a work-
ing democratic system. Media capabilities in this context could mean
that media and economic policy place constraints on such monopoliz-
ing behavior and provide additional public financing (press promotion,
subsidies, taxes, among other possibilities) to enable news providing
companies and platforms to fulfill their (see earlier) democratic func-
tions. The ensuing media variety might be another advantage of such an
adjustment of media policy. To know how quality journalism works does
not mean to be “capable” of providing it—media capabilities would of
107. Ward, 89–99.

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course include these views, as they may be applied to the mesolevel of

media organizations as well.
The second issue addresses structural constraint which some authori
tarian state actors have placed on the press in recent times. State domi-
nated media conglomerates, media laws not forbidding high concentration
rates, journalists who face threats for researching politically delicate stories,
and of course the equalization of journalistic publication with “fake news”
are some examples. All of these hurt a basic assumption of the capability
approach: it is vital for reaching consent on important normative issues
like justice to be able to compare different approaches to it based on a large
informational base, which is made impossible by such structural inequal-
ities; and it would destroy the possibility of “publicity” in the first place if
such limitations are in place in some countries. Therefore, there seems to be
a macrolevel demand in such instances that goes beyond the clear necessity
of free and democratic elections: the constitutional aspect of media liberties
and media diversity must (again) be stressed. It will be interesting to see if
concepts like media capabilities (but also other attempts to strengthen the
role of media economic and media ethical thinking in media and economic
policy) can translate into such far reaching changes of whole media systems.
Summary
This article was an attempt to show possible contributions of a specific

theory (the capability approach of Amartya Sen) to normative media and
communications science. After circumscribing a situation of the mod-
ern society, which can be called “mediatization,” the history and current
importance of normative approaches to media economics was depicted.
The classical and neoclassical viewpoints of political-economic questions
and possible advantages from applying a social choice framework were
described. I then focused on one specific normative economic theory
grounded in social choice, the capability approach and its criticisms of
utilitarian viewpoints. While some limits of this approach were depicted
and its basic connection to economic theory was stressed, the advantage
of a capabilities point of view is the inclusion of more information into
economic and policy models.
Out of the many possible applications of this approach,108 I focused on
two issues normative media economics and media policy should deal with:
108. See, for example, Kuklys for a profound overview.

103.115.14.17 on Thu, 11 Feb 2021 06:36:19 UTC
the encompassing concept of media capabilities, which could be further

developed by media economics, media policy, and media pedagogy; and
the concept of justice and its connection with publicity, which touches
on the most fundamental role of mass media: to provide information for
comparative evaluations of justice and give public reasoning the possibility
to flourish.
Some issues have only been touched in this article, like the possible role
of other disciplines (than economics, ethics, and communication science)
in tackling the respective problems, or the role of media policy and media
pedagogy in actually applying the concept of media capabilities in prac-
tice. If it has managed to clarify the importance of larger informational
bases (than utilitarianism provides) for social and economic evaluations in
the mediatized economy, the role of discursive and comparative processes
when questions of justice are concerned (and the role of mass media within
such processes), and the use of public reasoning in media economic and
policy analyses, the aims of this article have been more than reached.
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The Political Economy of Media Capabilities: The Capability Approach in Media Policy

Author(s): Michael Litschka

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.9.2019.0063

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This article is a contribution to media and communication science as a

Michael Litschka: St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences

Journal of Information Policy, Volume 9, 2019

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2. For example, Sen, On Ethics and Economics; Idea of Justice.

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and tasks of mass media in society. The summary concludes by rein-

The Political Economy of Media within a Mediatized Economy

Mediatization as Encompassing Social Phenomenon

In Krotz,3 the following basic definition of mediatization in society is

chain is described as making use of the Internet, mobile data communica-

3. Krotz, Die Mediatisierung kommunikativen.

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The mediatized company becomes a publicly exposed organization

6. Litschka and Karmasin, 223.

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Normativity in Media Economics

In view of the earlier described developments in the “media society,” what is

13. For example, Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch.

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improve economic affairs, eradicate poverty, equalize the d ­ istribution of

16. Becker; Blaug, Disease of Formalism in Economics; Coleman and Fararo.

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normative concepts, laden with value judgments. As Joan Robinson23 puts

23. Robinson, 14.

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tradition,” focusing more on theoretical (e.g., sociological and political)

Streams of Normative Media Economics

Following Seufert,36 the basic common core of heterodox theories of media

29. Picard, Media Economics.

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New political economics (and new institutional economics) criticizes

38. For example, Frey, “Inspirierende Ökonomie und die Medien.”

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Finally yet importantly, we could include social choice frameworks into

Sen’s Capability Approach as Social Choice Argument

Amartya Sen’s capability approach is a widely discussed alternative to util-

The Problem of Rational Choice

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“bonum commune”? While mainstream economists answer this question

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because it is encoded and expensive to reach, or because the ­necessary

49. Kiefer, 178.

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The Problem of Utility and Capabilities

Accepting these limitations of rational choice and economic rationality,

52. Sen, “Rational Fools,” 95.

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55. Ibid., 41.

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61. In Sen and Williams further limitations of utilitarianism are analyzed.

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68. Sen, “The Possibility of Social Choice,” 192.

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improve economic affairs, eradicate poverty, equalize the d istribution of

because it is encoded and expensive to reach, or because the necessary

transactions and just distributions or Hayek88 and his evolutionary ethics,

information and communication and their respective problems in the