Flawed Players in a Complex Game: Popular Audiovisual Explanations of Economics in the United States

IF 1.2 2区历史学 Q3 ECONOMICS

History of Political Economy Pub Date : 2023-08-17 DOI:10.1215/00182702-10875129

Roei Davidson

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Abstract

This article analyzes Money, Explained, a five-episode video series produced by the American explanatory journalism organization Vox and distributed globally by Netflix, as an exemplar of the recent proliferation of digital media content explaining economic issues to a general public. Such content reflects the increased prominence of news-about-relations in economic news coverage, a news form that aims to explain why current trends and events occur while also echoing early twentieth-century corporate pedagogic films and more recent personal finance journalism that instructs audiences on proper capitalist behavior. The Vox series considers several financial topics all centered on economic problems that individuals experience, involving get-rich-quick schemes, gambling, retirement saving, credit cards, and student loans. It focuses on individuals' psychological flaws as a cause for the problems they encounter and suggests that viewers can change their disposition and modify their individual behavior to surmount these problems. The series identifies some aspects of the economic system as unfair but does not consider the capacity of individuals to act collectively to restructure it.

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复杂游戏中的缺陷玩家:美国流行的经济学视听解释

本文分析了由美国解释性新闻组织Vox制作并由Netflix在全球发行的五集视频连续剧《金钱，解释》，作为最近向公众解释经济问题的数字媒体内容激增的一个例子。这些内容反映了经济新闻报道中关于关系的新闻越来越突出，这种新闻形式旨在解释当前趋势和事件发生的原因，同时也呼应了20世纪早期的企业教育电影和最近的个人金融新闻，指导观众正确的资本主义行为。Vox系列考虑了几个金融主题，都集中在个人经历的经济问题上，包括快速致富计划、赌博、退休储蓄、信用卡和学生贷款。它关注的是个人的心理缺陷是他们遇到问题的原因，并建议观众可以改变他们的性格，改变他们的个人行为来克服这些问题。该系列认定经济体系的某些方面是不公平的，但没有考虑个人集体行动重组经济体系的能力。

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来源期刊

History of Political Economy Multiple-

CiteScore

1.20

自引率

14.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Focusing on the history of economic thought and analysis, History of Political Economy has made significant contributions to the field and remains its foremost means of communication. In addition to book reviews, each issue contains original research on the development of economic thought, the historical background behind major figures in the history of economics, the interpretation of economic theories, and the methodologies available to historians of economic theory. All subscribers to History of Political Economy receive a hardbound annual supplement as part of their subscription.