The role of cultural industries in modern inequality remains obscured.

Evidence

Temporally, this book focuses on the new century, from 1999 to 2023. The period begins with the repeal of Glass-Steagall and its financial deregulation, the dot-com crash and its birthing of Big Tech, and massive media mergers involving Viacom, TimeWarner, Clear Channel, and Vivendi. Twenty years of financial extraction and media consolidation later, we arrive in 2020 with four tech giants valued at over a trillion dollars each; a clear pivot to streaming media amid more mergers involving Disney, Fox, and Warner; and the COVID-19 pandemic’s dramatic exposure of inequality. At this point, the fact of a New Gilded Age is unavoidable, yet the role of the cultural industries in this inequality is obscured. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 43

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘New Gilded Age’ framing parallels the Gilded-Age-era consolidation thesis in my milgrom/Shapiro-titled institutional economics readings. — connects to: Silicon Valley’s celebrated culture conceals its dependence on exploited undocumented labor and structural inequality. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 119
• SEED: Potential angle: tracing one deregulatory act (Glass-Steagall repeal) through a specific media merger to a specific programming decision.