Original article Microeconomics

A NETWORK APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-MEDIA COMPLEX IN BULGARIA

Fabio A. Telarico
Received: 12 Dec 2024
Revised:
Published:
Downloads: 0
Citations: 0
Book 4/2024
JEL C88 F51 C60 F59
DOI https://doi.org/10.56497/etj2469402

Abstract

Both the media and arms manufacturers play a key role in shaping public opinion on the conflict in Ukraine. Thus, it is necessary to question the extent to which the latter influences or even colludes with the former. In this context, the term media-military-industrial complex gives theoretical backing to the hypothesis that the media has a vested interest in promoting (not-so-)banal militarism for the benefit of the military-industrial complex. Favourable coverage of military operations and firms would likely be highly correlated to cross-sector corporate ties and/or sheer thirst for advertising revenues. Combining a network approach to the analysis of data on corporate structures with theoretically and empirically grounded arguments, this paper sketches a picture of the extent to which a military-industrial-media complex exists in Bulgaria and its reach.

How to cite this article

Telarico, F. A. (2024). A Network Approach to the Study of the Military-Industrial-Media Complex in Bulgaria. Economic Thought Journal, 69 (4), 442-463.https://doi.org/10.56497/etj2469402

References

Adams, W., and Adams, W. J. (1972). The Military-Industrial Complex: A Market Structure Analysis. The American Economic Review, 62 (1/2), 279-87.

Aspaturian, V. V. (1972). The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex – Does It Exist? Journal of International Affairs, 26, (1), 1-28.

Barnet, R. J. (1969). The Economy of Death. 1st edition. Scribner.

Barucca, P., and Fabrizio, L. (2016). Disentangling Bipartite and Core-Periphery Structure in Financial Networks. Chaos, Solitons &, 88 (July), 244-253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2016.02.004.

Baum, J. A. C., and McGahan, A. M. (2009). Outsourcing War: The Evolution of the Private Military Industry after the Cold War. Rochester, NY: SSRN Scholarly Paper. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1496498.

Boggs, C. ([2007] 2017). The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture. 2nd edition. New York City, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315086279 .

Bonn, S. A. (2010). Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the U.S. War on Iraq. Rutgers University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hj7dw .

Broder, A., Kumar, R., Maghoull, F., Raghavan, P., Rajagopalan, S., Raymie Stata, R., Tomkins, A., and Wiener, J. (2000). Graph Structure in the Web: Experiments and Models. Computer Networks, 33 (1-6), 309-20.

Cassidy, K. J. (1991). Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex: Using the Social Thought of Juergen Habermas to Understand and Respond to the Power of the Pentagon in American Life. Journal for Peace and Justice Studies, 4 (2), 117-27. https://doi.org/10.5840/peacejustice19914219.

Chiquet, J., Donnet, S., and Barbillon, P. ([2020] 2023). Sbm: Stochastic Blockmodels. OS Independent. Paris: AgroParisTech-MIA. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=sbm .

Crama, Y., and Leruth, L. (2007). Control and Voting Power in Corporate Networks: Concepts and Computational Aspects. European Journal of Operational Research, 178 (3), 879-93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2006.02.020 .

Cuff, R. D. (1978). An Organizational Perspective on the Military-Industrial Complex. Business History Review, 52 (2), 250-67. https://doi.org/10.2307/3113037 .

Der Derian, J. ([2001] 2009). Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network. 2nd edition. Routledge.

DiMaggio, A. (2009). When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent. NYU Press.

Domhoff, G. W. ([1967] 2013). Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich. 7th edition. New York City, NY: McGraw Hill.

Du Boff, R. B. (1969). Pentagonism or Imperialism? Monthly Review, April, 25-36. https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-020-11-1969-04_3 .

Duncan, Th. K., and Coyne, Ch. J. (2015). The Revolving Door and the Entrenchment of the Permanent War Economy. Rochester, NY: SSRN Scholarly Paper. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2547996 .

European Defence Agency (EDA). (2022). Defence Data Portal. 12 August 2022. Available at https://eda.europa.eu/publications-and-data/defence-data .

Holland, P. W., Blackmond Laskey, K., and Leinhardt, S. (1983). Stochastic Blockmodels: First Steps. Social Networks, 5 (2): 109-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-8733(83)90021-7.

Hooks, G. (1991). Forging the Military-Industrial Complex: World War II’s Battle of the Potomac. 1st edition. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Horowitz, I. L. (1971). The Pentagon Papers and Social Science. Transaction: Social Science and Modern Society, 10 (6), 36-40.

Infogram. (2017). The Biggest Advertising Companies in Bulgaria. [Infogram. (2017). Най-големите рекламни компании в България] (in Bulgarian). Available at https://infogram.com/naj-golemite-reklamni-kompanii-v-bulgariya-1g0gmj79no5nm1q .

Kalinka, A. T., and Tomancak, Р. (2011). Linkcomm: An R Package for the Generation, Visualization, and Analysis of Link Communities in Networks of Arbitrary Size and Type. Bioinformatics, 27 (14), 2011-12. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btr311 .

Kellner, D. M. (2009). Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush-Cheney Era. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Khalife, S., Read, J., and Vazirgiannis, М. (2021). Structure and Influence in a Global Capital-Ownership Network. Applied Network Science, 6 (1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-021-00359-6 .

Krahmann, E. (2005). New Threats and New Actors in International Security. Springer.

Lamb, N. H., and Roundy, Ph. (2016). The ‘Ties That Bind’ Board Interlocks Research: A Systematic Review. Management Research Review, 39 (11), 1516-42. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRR-02-2015-0027 .

Markusen, A., and Serfati, С. (2000). Remaking the Military Industrial Relationship: A French‐American Comparison. Defence and Peace Economics, 11 (1), 271-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/10430710008404950 .

McKenzie, W. (1996). In the Shadow of the Military-Entertainment Complex. Continuum, 9 (1), 98-117. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304319609365693 .

McLaren, P., and Martin, G. (2004). The Legend of the Bush Gang: Imperialism, War, and Propaganda. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 4 (3), 281-303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708603262711 .

Melman, S. (1970). Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. 1st edition. New York City, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria. (2008). White Paper on Defence and the Armed Forces of the Republic of Bulgaria. Sofia. [Министерство на отбраната на Р. България. (2008). Бяла книга за отбраната и въоръжените сили на Република България. София]. (in Bulgarian). Available at https://www.mod.bg/bg/doc/drugi/20101130_WP_BG.pdf .

Mintz, A. (1983). The Military‐industrial Complex: The Israeli Case. Journal of Strategic Studies, 6 (3), 103-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402398308437160 .

Moskos, Ch. C. Jr. (1974). The Concept of the Military-Industrial Complex: Radical Critique or Liberal Bogey? Social Problems, 21 (4), 498-512. https://doi.org/10.2307/799988 .

Moyers, B. (dir.). (2007). Buying the War. 4:3. Bill Moyers Journal. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Available at https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html .

Nester, W. R. (1997). Weapons and Spaceships: The Military-Industrial Complex. In: Nester, W. R. American Industrial Policy: Free or Managed Markets? London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 134-92. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25568-9_5 .

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). (2022). NATO Audience Research: Pre-Summit Polling Results 2022 (Data Tables), 22 June 2022. Available at https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/6/pdf/220622-pre-summit-research-2022-data-en.pdf.

O’Brien, D. P., and Waehrer, K. (2016). The Competitive Effects of Common Ownership: We Know Less than We Think. Antitrust Law Journal, 81, 729.

Peixoto, T. P. ([2018] 2019). Graph-Tools: Tools for Graph Theory and Network Science with Many Generation Models. OS Independent. Python. Available at https://github.com/h-ohsaki/graph-tools .

Peixoto, T. P. (2020). Bayesian Stochastic Blockmodeling. In: Doreian, Р., Batagelj, V., and Ferligoj, A. (eds.). Advances in Network Clustering and Blockmodeling, 1st edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 289-332. Available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.10225.pdf .

Robb, D. L. (2004). Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. Prometheus Books.

Rosen, S. J. (1973). Testing the Theory of the Military-Industrial Complex. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Rungi, A., Morrison, G., and Pammolli, F. (2017). Global Ownership and Corporate Control Networks. Working Paper 07. WP Series. Lucca, Italy: IMT School for Advanced Studies. Available at https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/ialwpaper/7_2f2017.htm .

Schmalz, M. C. (2018). Common-Ownership Concentration and Corporate Conduct. Annual Review of Financial Economics, Vol. 10, 413-48. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-financial-110217-022747 .

Shearer, D. (1998). Outsourcing War. Foreign Policy, No. 112, 68-81. https://doi.org/10.2307/1149036 .

Singer, P. W. (2005). Outsourcing War. Foreign Affairs, 84 (2), 119-32. https://doi.org/10.2307/20034280 .

Slater, J., and Nardin, Т. (1973). The Concept of a Military-Industrial Complex. In: Rosen, S. J. (ed.). Testing the Theory of the Military-Industrial Complex, 27-60. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Snijders, T. A. B., and Nowicki, K. (1997). Estimation and Prediction for Stochastic Blockmodels for Graphs with Latent Block Structure. Journal of Classification, 14 (1), 75-100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s003579900004 .

Solomon, N. (2007). The Military-Industrial-Media Complex. Democratic Communiqué 21 (1). Available at https://scholarworks.umass.edu/democratic-communique/vol21/iss1/4 .

Stahl, R. (2009). Militainment, Inc.: War, Media, and Popular Culture. New York City, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203879603 .

Tabouy, T., Barbillon, Р., and Chiquet, J. (2020). Variational Inference for Stochastic Block Models from Sampled Data. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 115 (529), 455-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.2018.1562934 .

Telarico, F. A. (2023). FinNet: Quickly Build and Manipulate Financial Networks. Available at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/FinNet/ .

Turse, N. (2009). The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. 1st edition. Metropolitan Books.

Vavrus, M. D. (2013). Lifetime’s Army Wives, or I Married the Media-Military-Industrial Complex. Women’s Studies in Communication, 36 (1), 92-112. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2012.756441 .

WB (World Bank). (2023). Inflation, Consumer Prices (Annual %) – Bulgaria (2006-2017). Available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?end=2017&locations=BG&start=2006&view=chart .

Weber, R. N. (2023). Military-Industrial Complex. In: Encyclopaedia Britannica. London: Britannica. Available at https://www.britannica.com/topic/military-industrial-complex .

Wezeman, S. T., and Kuimova, А. (2018). Bulgaria and Black Sea Security. Policy Brief (SIPRI Background Paper). Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Available at https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2018-12/bp_1812_black_sea_bulgaria_1.pdf .

Žiberna, A. (2007). Generalized Blockmodeling of Valued Networks. Social Networks 29 (1), 105-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2006.04.002 .

How to publish

Are you an author? Please read our publishing terms first.

Learn