Political Economy of Corporate Power and Free Speech in the United States Blevins Jeffrey Layne* University of Cincinnati, USA *Correspondence to: Jeffrey Layne Blevins, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Journalism, McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210069, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0069, USA. E-mail: Jeffrey. Blevins@UC.edu.
Online published on 12 September, 2016. Abstract This political economic analysis of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence broadly examines corporate speech rights in campaigns and elections, in commercial speech, and in conflicts between speech and privacy. From this examination, it appears that corporate wealth has expressed its dominance within communication space, which was once the primary domain of human liberty. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates the ‘historical amnesia’ expressed within the Supreme Court about the revolutionary potential of electronic media, as corporate encroachment of communication space is diminishing the value of human speech under the law. Top Keywords Political economy, corporate speech, commercial speech, First Amendment, speech rights. Top |