Robert McChesney: History and Political Economy of Communication & Media (Ongoing Archive)

Robert McChesney's Personal Website


Digital Disconnect (USA: Jeremy Earp and Robert McChesney, 2018: 63 mins) ["Tracing the Internet’s history as a publicly-funded government project in the 1960s, to its full-scale commercialisation today, Digital Disconnect shows how the Internet’s so-called “democratising potential” has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism, and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Based on the acclaimed book by media scholar Robert McChesney, the film examines the ongoing attack on the concept of net neutrality by telecom monopolies such as Comcast and Verizon, explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting our personal data and selling it to advertisers, and shows how these monopolies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs. We also see how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological information bubbles and elevate propaganda at the expense of real journalism. But while most debates about the Internet focus on issues like the personal impact of Internet-addiction or the rampant data-mining practices of companies like Facebook, Digital Disconnectdigs deeper to show how capitalism itself turns the Internet against democracy. The result is an indispensable resource for helping viewers make sense of a technological revolution that has radically transformed virtually aspect of human communication."]

Foster, John Bellamy and Robert W. McChesney. "The Internet's Unholy Marriage to Capitalism" Monthly Review (March 2011)

Foster, John Bellamy, Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna. "The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism." Monthly Review 63.6 (November 2011)

---. "The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital." Monthly Review (June 1, 2011)

---. "Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism." Monthly Review (April 1, 2011)

McChesney, Robert W. and John Nichols. "The Bull Market: Political Advertising." Monthly Review (April 1, 2012)

---. "Who Will Win the Digital Revolution?" Needs No Introduction (April 21, 2016)