MECANISMO DE ACTIVACIÓN DE LA SÍNTESIS DE ADN

Another theme in the literature has been the examination of media discourses on economics and finance particularly in terms of how these (re)presentations not only reflect or represent but help to generate shifts in the normative and ideological suppositions commensurate with regulatory, institutional and technological changes in the economy. As mentioned earlier, one particularly significant change since the 1970s has been the gradual dismantling of Keynesian macroeconomic arrangements in favour of neoliberal/ monetarist policies. This shift in macroeconomic policy has entailed a significant rebalancing of the relations among the spheres of state, capital and civil society. At the same time, the facilitation of free capital flows and market re/deregulation has required the deprioritisation of government expenditure on a wide range of public services. In short, the imperatives of global capital have come to be prioritised over those of civil society.

As Parsons (1989) points out, financial discourses in the media have played an important role in the legitimation of historical policy shifts and the normalisation of neoliberal/ monetarist policy arrangements among policy makers and the business community. The popularisation of ‘new right’ economic ideas was facilitated by the engagement of influential theorists with the media at the same time as the economic upheavals of the 1970s were opening up new spaces for debate and issue-framing. Most notable here was Milton Friedman, whom Parsons suggests was crucial in the legitimation of monetarist ideas through commentaries on television and through general media like Newsweek magazine. Krugman (1994) has also identified the importance of ‘policy entrepreneurs’,

suggesting that the legitimation of the neoliberal ideas such as the privatisation, deregulation and lower taxation was made possible through journalistic discourses on ‘supply side’ economics (see also Brown, 1994).

Other studies have shown how financial media discourses have helped cultivate public attitudes towards finance that, particularly since the 1980s, have helped normalise the gradual atrophy of the welfare state and public services and the increasing emphasis on the individual’s private responsibility for their own financial security (Cheney, 1998; Hope, 1998; Fairclough, 2000; Thrift, 2001; Greenfield & Williams, 2001, 2007). Cheney points to the proliferation of particular forms economic rhetoric that has led to a valorisation of economic rationality and popular business concepts such as ‘efficiency’, ‘competition’, and ‘quality management’ even when the practical consequences of applying those values entail inefficiencies, limitation of competition and decreases in quality. Economic rhetoric does not inflect discourse only in the sphere of business and finance, but pervades those of the polity and lifeworld: ‘economic discourse has come to subsume many

political and social discourses such that it often seems that everything is redefined in purely economic terms in order to have great practical significance. (Cheney, 1998, p.31). This suggests

the media have played an important role in legitimating the re-ordering of relations between the financial sphere and other spheres of social activity. Although Cheney identifies the importance of considering how particular rhetorical forms influence economic norms and rationality within business management, he does not really extend his examination of economic rhetoric into analysis of how this may inflect the formation of economic relations on a broader social level.

Thrift (2001) also makes a contribution to the literature on financial discourse and rhetoric, arguing that the emergence of the ‘new economy’ in the 1980s with its emphasis on new managerial practices and valorisation of the financial sector stemmed largely from ‘rhetorical fabrication’ involving romanticised mythologies of business (such as the Gordon Gekko- style aestheticisation of greed as sexy; see Leyshon & Thrift, 1997b) which underpin the performative reframing of economic and financial reality. Interestingly, Thrift asserts that the media played a constitutive role in the new economy as the primary conduit for financial information and that the media rhetoric fetishizing new financial opportunities (notably the hi-tech stocks on the NASDAQ) in the new economy ‘worked to the extent that it began to re-describe market fundamentals’ (2001, p.425). The performative aspect of rhetoric here assumes that media discourses do more than merely describe or legitimate financial conditions; rather, they constitute changes in those conditions, notably in the formation of a new market culture.

For Thrift, it was the emergence of this new cultural formation that drove the development of financial information and communication technologies. Indeed he argues that the primary driver of the ‘new economy’ as the new brand and key-word of capitalism was the cultural circuit of capital which developed from the 1960 and which Thrift describes as ‘a machine for producing and

disseminating knowledge to business elites’ (2001, p.415) that has a symbiotic relation to the media

(p.416). The normative valorisation of those technologies in the new market culture led to capital- intensive investment in the development of NCT infrastructures to support financial activity which in turn required that it be deployed and institutionalised in financial practices; “My aim is to show that

many of the new developments in ICT are the results of a technological forced march resulting from the rhetorical push of the cultural circuit of capital and the resultant sheer weight of investments from finance. In large part, ICT was created anew by the new market culture” (2001, p.414)

Thrift’s position here certainly challenges materialist/ functionalist accounts of the growth of financial markets, particularly in its foregrounding of cultural relations as a driver of infrastructure developments. However, Thrift’s intriguing suggestion that capital investment in NCTs generated its own impetus for implementation must also recognise the functional trading advantage in utilising any technology that enables market information to be accessed or processed more quickly than one’s rivals. The trading edge conferred by NCTs cannot be reduced to rhetorical/discursive formations alone. Thrift’s formulation here can be taken further by a clearer differentiation of the constitutive roles respectively played by financial information/communications media and the rhetorical forms they help to proliferate. The constitutive functions of financial media as the

channels of economic activity are therefore related to but distinct from the constitutive functions of

Greenfield & Williams’ (2001, 2007) analyses of economic discourses in Australia identify a key role for the media in the framing and legitimation of neoliberal policy arrangements and the emergence of a new finance culture. Their arguments parallel those of Cheney and Thrift in regard to the rhetorical/ discursive underpinnings of financialization and the valorisation of market deregulation as an extension of democracy. An important theme addressed more specifically by Greenfield & Williams is the role of the state and key government/political actors in actively producing the policy arrangements needed to accommodate financial accumulation (both domestically and supranationally through forums such as the WTO) and the implications for civil society. In particular, they critically examine how Keynesian welfare expectations such as pension provision have been increasingly supplanted with neoliberal notions of individual financial responsibility, and link this to shifts in media discourses and the ways in which public audiences are engaged/ interpellated on financial issues. Although ideological contestation within those discourses remains, there has been a significant increase in the amount of public media content dealing with financial issues. On one level, this may sensitise audiences to the elite status of finance. For example, Greenfield and Williams (2001) identify a significant growth in the advertising of financial investment opportunities to the general public. They also identify a shift from the presentation of financial investment as just one dimension of the economic sphere towards it being presented as the predominant logic and driving force for business and social policy (Greenfield & Williams, 2007). On another level, coupled with the re-framing of financial issues as significant for the general public, media presentations of finance may increase financial literacy (at least among more educated audiences) but at the same time as they help to rationalise political policies which erode civic entitlements and circumscribe political participation.

Importantly, Greenfield and Williams also point to the constitutive role of media presentations and financial discourses, specially in the formation of a new financial rationality underpinning the audience’s sense of identity as economic actors and citizens. This involves the demarcation and legitimation of particular ways of conceiving/thinking about the economy as well as (drawing on Hindess, 1988) undertaking meaningful economic action. In this regard financial rationality

‘comprises the techniques of calculation and the assumptions […] that enable neoliberalism to be enacted’ and has ‘narrowed an earlier economic rationality so that an already crimped attention to social policy in the earlier rationality has been further attenuated’ (2007, p.420). This is an important

argument in understanding the media’s role in facilitating changes in macroeconomic policy arrangements. However, it should be noted that the constitutive role of financial discourses identified here relates more specifically to media content and audience engagement with a focus on shifts in the public’s positioning and agency in relation to finance capital and the state concomitant with the growth of finance as the central driver of accumulation. This is related to but distinct from Thrift’s broader (if fuzzier) formulation of the constitutive role of financial rhetoric as a driver of financial NCTs and also the more specific constitutive forms of media channels and performative modes of action within financial markets themselves.

Despite the growing emphasis on financial markets in public media and the claims of increasing financial literacy, their mechanisms and the nature of their relation to the industrial economy have arguably remained relatively obscure and politically irrelevant to the majority of ordinary citizens. However, when financial crises threaten savings, pension schemes and jobs, their seemingly transcendent, if omnipresent, significance intrudes more tangibly into the lifeworld. In such circumstances, civil society may become sensitised to its own involuntary exposure to financial hazards and how political-economic arrangements intended to accommodate the accumulation imperatives of global capital affect their own lives. As Hope comments;

‘When financial systems falter or collapse, the socio-economic fall-out becomes

transparently apparent. It then becomes possible to debate the historical and geographic origins of the crisis at hand. This creates opportunities for oppositional criticisms of national elites, major corporations, and international lending institutions. In response, these vested interests may openly politicise themselves and thus intensify oppositional criticisms.’ (1998, pp. 32-33).

A cursory examination of US and UK media coverage of the unfolding credit crunch suggested normative ambivalence in regard to the reporting of government moves to buy-out, bail-out or otherwise guarantee bank holdings and prop up the credit system. Some general (i.e. non-financial)

news media have been quite forthright in their moral indignation at state bail-outs of banks and willingness to question whether the financial actors ostensibly responsible for the crisis are being held accountable (see, for example, CBS, 2008; Daily Mail, 2008). Other general news media have reflected discrepancies in the range of opinions among business and political elites (e.g. see BBC, 3 October 2008; Guardian, 2008; New York Times, 2008; also Fox News, 2 October 2008 and 19 November 2008). Perhaps because of their access to elite market sources or their business audience constituency, the specialist financial media appear more inclined to emphasise the responsibility of the state to provide solutions. For instance, in the decisions of the US government not to endorse an initial US$700 billion bail-out package have been framed as a failure of policy, suggesting that rescuing the banking system was regarded as an automatic obligation, not a option rightly subject to democratic deliberation (see CNBC, 2008; Financial Times, 2008). It would be premature to generalise from these examples, but they do suggest that there is potential for media discourses to become critical of finance. Public misgivings about the exposure of the lifeworld to financial markets hazards therefore represent a potential crisis of legitimation for capitalism, ironically at the ostensible zenith of its ideological ascendancy.