Social praxis is the unity of though and action. What you believe is what you do. Political economist sees research and action inseparable. Theorist must intervene in light of social anomalies. Political Economic Theory is characterized by three social processes. This process is a starting point in understanding how power and wealth constrains the production, distribution and consumption of media.

1. Commodification. This is the process of turning goods and services into a marketable product. Media has often been commodified.
2. Spatialization. These refers to the process of overcoming the constraints of space and time. In business it involves out sourcing labor. This is most evident on how large corporations build factories in other countries to take advantage of cheap labor. Spatialization also refers to the extension of corporate power through acquisition and strategic alliances. It extends a company’s reach to a wider audience and gives them an advantage in distributing their media. Because who owns the company says a lot of what they produce. Political economy theory considers this when interpreting messages.
3. Structuration. This is based on the view that people make history but not on their own terms. They are forced to function a category that social functions within a category that social institutions have placed. An important activity in structuration is the process of creating Hegenomy. This is defined as a result of a process of transforming contested ideas into a naturalized way of thinking about the world. Political economic theory evaluates how elites dominate the culture, values and ideology of a society. Ceratain norms about social class, race, gender and other social divisions are deeply engrained in the social structure. Political economic theorists must analyze how the media portrays these categories in order to understand societies and address injustice. The importance of these theory is that it encourages us to be reasonably skeptical of the media we consume. It makes us aware of the social forces that shape media and invites us to keep the profit oriented system in check.

What is political economy theory? The name itself gives us a hint. This is an approach to studying media that focuses on the politics and economics of media. It asks the question: How does power and wealth influence our systems of mass media? Political economy theory studies the power relations that influence the production, distribution and consumption of communication resources. In doing so, they shed light on why some messages are emphasized and other down played. This theory shows that corporate influence pervades society. It does not focus on the science and symbols of the text as cultural studies do. Rather it studies how the Government and stock market affect the media that we consume.

This theory has always been used to understand social change in history. The theory also examines the totality of social relations. It holds that the political, economic, social and cultural areas of life are intertwined. This various meet and influence media indifferent ways. Political Economic Theory is guided by moral philosophy. It not only describes the state of society but also encourages people to change their social behavior. With the knowledge of the society’s problem, theorist is driven to fight for democratic issues such as freedom of speech and access to education.

Most economy during this pandemic have been struggling hard to recover. Some economies have had different obstacles like red tape that threaten growth. Because of this pandemic different Government in different nation implement new regulations. With new regulations comes bigger bureaucracies. If these regulations get out of control then the economies suffer.

Since this pandemic started many unemployment has been hitting at a high rate. Different government regulations on this problems has a great impact. Different regulations may hinder the solution to this. It would cause more harm than good affecting mostly the economy. The lockdowns has also impacted the economy. Regulations on easing the lockdowns are also taken to consider. These is a burdens on the economy particularly on businesses. It create barriers to job growth and further hampers many fragile economies. If we want to overcome this crisis the Government should get serious on their response toward the virus and pandemic. They should review and polish different regulations being imposed. They should weigh the advantages and disadvantages. They should strengthen oversight and tackle different obstacles seriously.

Political economy is the study of the interaction of politics and economics. Where politics is the study of power and economics, the study of money or it focuses on the creation and distribution of wealth.  It is taking a look at a specific way on how goods and money get distributed within a particular country or between states. Both power and money go together, they are interchangeable.

Key concepts:

1. Markets. This is defined as what do people buy or sell.
2. Property. This is the ability to do what you want with an object.
3. Public Goods. These are things that are diffused to everyone. They usually come from state mechanism.

Different theories of political economy:

• Liberalism. This is a free market view.
• Mercantilism. This concept is followed when the State should have the most power in the market and economy.
• Communism. This concept believes that everyone should have equal amounts of properties. It results to people jointly owning everything.
• Social Democracy. There is a regulated market. It is a mix of Liberalism and Communism. The Government provides a lot of Social services to make up for the issues in the pure market.

Economics and Politics are undeniably intertwined. This is true because of the following reasons:

1. Economics play and depends greatly on Government policy. Economics is largely affected by the Government’s approach and policies. A good example of this the policy on Lassez-faire.
2. Economic theory and politics influence each other. Forms of government such as Socialism, Communism or Dictatorship has a say on how the economy should ran. Or economically powerful people can also influence and impact the economy by funding. The economy is also being influenced with the politics of the day.

1. All economic theories contain political value judgements. Economists have different theories on how the economic evolves how market competition works. These differences mainly come from different political judgments. A best example of this is the Pareto Criterion. It is defined when the re-allocation of resources cannot improve conditions for a person or a group without worsening conditions for others.
2. Power relationships affect the economy.

•  Structural Power. This power is coming from the imbalances in income and wealth
• The Power to Dictate within organizations.
• The power to make people think. Politics can dictate people on what you want them to think.

The pandemic has caused so much in people’s lives globally. So many lives were lost because of the new virus. Many people suffered, millions of people lost their work and livelihood. And yet as the new year enters we are still left uncertain about the pandemic. The pandemic isn’t just yet over. Millions are still at risk and hundreds of thousands more can die from this. We weren’t ready for this. Mankind is very anxious about the vaccine for COVID 19. The announcement of the vaccine coming gave hope to billions of people. All are looking forward to its protection.

The problem we are encountering this new year is its distribution. The politics involved in it is also another problem. This is what faces every nation. Who gets the vaccine first? Is there enough for all the people in the world? Governments are coming up with contingency plans on how to acquire the vaccine. We are not talking of hundreds but millions of vials. Some countries are struggling to raise funds for this. The people in every nation asks, who pays for them? Of course for most nations this will not be given for free. The vaccine is very important so people will be protected. Once the vaccine is our economies around the world will recover. However, we must remember that no vaccine has ever been proven to provide man with complete immunity but still mankind is hoping to have a dose of the vaccine because it gives them hope and this is a realization for everyone that good health is their priority.

There are two vital aspects for the nation to function properly. These are the political and economic aspect of a country. Politics and economic go together. There is no politics without economics and vice versa. A person who can vindicate the greater number of public confidence wins the heart of the majority. He or she eventually becomes a leader gaining power and trust. This leader will uphold all the economic and political policies of that nation. This will greatly depend on him. He will eventually form a government wherein he would appoint people as his advisers in running the nation. Their job is to come up with various economic outline that will help the economy. This leader will have the final say on them. He will then order the members of the government put in effect these various plans. Here we can see how politics makes a great impact on the country’s economy.

Acts of God or natural disasters are events that we do not have control of. Throughout the decades we have experienced economic losses because of disasters and calamities. Because of these calamities, there is potential damage to property and loss of lives. At present we can correlate stronger calamities such as hurricanes due to climate change because of the continuous economic exposure which leads to the abuse of nature. Governments should put more emphasis on this problem. Our leaders should design a strict policy that can control or mitigate the continuous exploitation of our natural resources that can contribute to calamities and disasters with unforeseeable damage and impact on our society.

Through these policies, we can avoid economic losses. Economic losses due to natural disasters have been common in the past decades.

Aside from implementing strict policies about this problem more research is also required on the long-term impacts of calamities and natural disasters.