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w b e m~ ' inequality massively daJ2vwm&espeopk's access to goods and seruices, and tbose goods and seruices are tbemsehs a necessary resource for ci&ensEp, tben political rigbts are tbe victim of tbe uicissitdes of tbe markeplace and its inegalttariun structure."The new market-oriented communications and information system that is currently gaining ground within liberal democracies is being sold to the general public on the promise that it will enlarge people's choices and increase their control over their lives, that it will be both liberating and empowering. This emerging order is the product of two major processes: technological innovation and convergence, and "privatization." The first is creating a range of new kinds of communications and information services and restructuring established media industries; the second is providing the essential social and ideological context in which these changes are being developed and promoted."Privatization," with which we are primarily concerned in this article, operates on two main levels. Economically it involves moving the production and provision of communications and information services from the public sector to the market, both by transferring ownership of key facilities to private investors and by making success in the marketplace the major criterion for judging the performance of all communications and information organizations (including those that remain in the public sector). This reconstitution of production is accompanied by a parallel restructuring of consumption. First, nonwork activity becomes ever more securely rooted in the home. Second, the new market-oriented system of provision addresses people predominantly through their identity as consumers, both of the communications and information products they buy and of the products promoted in the expanded advertising system that finances many of the new services. In the process, the system marginalizes or displaces other identities, in particular the identity of citizen. Although a number of commentators have attacked the "privatization" of communications and information services and challenged the claim that the Graham Murdock

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