Two Regimes of Valuation: Commercial Extraction and Administrative Devaluation in the Political Economy of Communication

Abstract

This article develops a critical political-economy analysis of how communicative work becomes economically and legally intelligible. It examines two empirical sites, a) the commercial political commentary of the American podcast Pod Save America (PSA) on Donald Trump's reciprocal tariff policy, and the prosecution of Indonesian videographer Amsal Christy Sitepu over village profile videos produced under a digital-village program. Drawing on Vincent Mosco's political economy of communication, the article argues that the cases should not be treated as symmetrical outcomes of a single process. PSA demonstrates commodification, in which political critique is packaged and circulated through revenue-bearing media infrastructure that can covert content and audience attention into exchange value. The Amsal case reveals administrative devaluation, in which an audit-based valuation process reportedly failed to recognize creative conception, editing and narration as legitimate economic components of audiovisual production, thereby exposing creative labor to legal risk. The finding from this research revealed unequal regimes of valuation. Market actors may recognize communication in order to extract revenue, whereas bureaucratic actors may deny its legitimate value in order to discipline expenditure and define legal responsibility. The article therefore extends a critical reading of Mosco by placing commodification alongside the institutional politics of valuation, ideology, and resistance. It argues that the central question is not only whether communication is commodified, but who has the authority to define value, through which infrastructures, and with what consequences for workers, audiences, and public culture.