DEEP END OF THE POOL

Form, Content and Context
Representation & Interpretation
Empowerment & Protection
Narrative, Literacy & Learning
Arts & Social Activism
KEY THEMES IN MEDIA STUDIES

Chicago School
Birmingham School
Toronto School
Frankfurt School
Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert
Marcuse
CRITICAL THEORY – POLITICAL ECONOMY
John Dewey, George Herbert Mead,
Charles Cooley, Harold Lasswell
PROPAGANDA – MEDIA EFFECTS
Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis
TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall
CULTURAL STUDIES
THE STANDARD HISTORICAL STORY OF MEDIA STUDIES HISTORY
Media & Politics, Film Studies, Media
Psychology, Media Education, Game
Studies, Internet Studies, Digital
Humanities, etc etc etc

Melvin DeFleur
 Many important social science
theories were developed to explore
media influence
 Media studies has been viewed as an
applied field to prepare practitioners
 Qualitative, critical and applied
research have grown in importance as
a result of the economics of higher
education
 This work offers little value to the
field
 The decline in social science
approaches to research has damaged
the ability to create new knowledge
1998
DeFleur, Melvin. 1998. “Where Have All the Milestones Gone? The Decline of Significant Research on the Processes and
Effects of Mass Communication.” Mass Communication and Society 1(2), 85 – 98.

 What other factors and historical forces have contributed to
the declining importance of social science approaches in the
field of media studies?
 Do the historic theories of media influence still make sense in
the age of the Internet and social media? Are they still
relevant? Why or why not?
 How has research hyperspecialization helped or hurt the
overall coherence and integrity of the field?

Johan Fornas
 Dialectic framing has long been part of
the field of media studies
 There is much productive tension with
these crosscurrents:
 Dual focus on culture and context has
advanced new knowledge
 Focus on the relationship between digital
and intermedial forms (including the arts
& F2F communication) has challenged
definitions of media
 Focus on media settings or media history
have lifted the significance of
ethnographic research
 Focus on images and words & meanings or
material objects of media production and
consumption has helped to explore the
relationship between them
2008
Johan Fornäs, 2008. “Bridging Gaps: Ten Crosscurrents in Media Studies.” Media, Culture and Society 30(6), 895-905, 2008.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443708096811.

 How has globalization and the rise of European Contintental
traditions of scholarship affected the field of media studies in
the U.S.?
 How has the economics of higher education affected the way
researchers and scholars engage in “great debates”?

Tara McPherson
 Media studies has roots in the interpretive
humanities – film studies
 Computer: a platform, a medium, a
visualization device
 Digital humanities scholars comment on
technology, but they should be using
digital tools to create and circulate ideas
 New forms of scholarly output will
contribute to new knowledge
2009
McPherson, Tara. 2009. “Media Studies and the Digital Humanities.” Cinema Journal 48(2), 119 – 123.

 How does the tension between process and product support
new knowledge in interpretive/creative forms of media
studies?
 When the scholar is a creator, what are the implications for
teaching and learning?
 How does peer review work for new forms of expression in
the digital humanities?
 How have foundations & other stakeholders shaped the field?

Sonia Livingstone
 1980 marked a shift in thinking about
audiences: from passive to active
 Uses and gratifications
 Cultural studies
 Spectacle- performance
 Audience behavior changed radically in the
1990s but audience researchers did not adapt
theories or methods
 The rise of network culture made the
relationship between media structures and
audience behavior more complex
 The concept of audience has shifted from a
focus on individuals or groups to become a
process of participation that has subjective
norms, terms & conditions
 By recovering the concept of genre, we might
better understand the interface between
audiences, text and contexts
2012
Livingstone, Sonia (2012) “Exciting Moments in Audience Research – Past, Present and Future.” In Helen Bilandzic, Patriarche,
Geoffroy and Traudt , Paul, (Eds.) The Social Use of Media: Cultural and Social Scientific Perspectives on Audience Research (pp.
257-274). ECREA Book Series. Intellect Ltd, Brighton, UK.

 What forms of inquiry help us generalize new knowledge
consider the vastness of the way people engage with media
texts, tools and technologies?
 How may metacognition and reflection affect the way that
people come to examine and critically analyze their behaviors
and identities as authors and audiences?

Mihita Iquani & Anna Feingenbaum
 The field of media studies is
interdisciplinary and so is the approach to
teaching and learning
 Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary
research challenges established power
structures in higher education
 UK Media Studies faculty have diverse
backgrounds, teach course content that
integrates subjects and topics from several
fields, and teach students with divergent
levels of knowledge and expertise
 The pressure to discipline Media Studies is
the result of higher education’s increasingly
competitive business model
2015

 What does it mean to have a disciplinary identity? How does
it shape the way people create new knowledge?
 Why have US institutions become more fiercely disciplinary
while UK institutions have become more interdisciplinary?
 How do disciplines freeze or free up the creation of new
knowledge?

Standing on
the Shoulders
of Giants

Finding Your Tribe

Community of Scholars

Community of Scholars
• International Communication
Association (ICA)
• National Communication Association
(NCA)
• Society for Film and Media Studies
(SCMS)
• International Association for Mass
Communication Research (IAMCR)
• National Association for Media Literacy
Education (NAMLE)
• Digital Media and Learning (DML)
• Popular Culture Association (PCA)

STRETCH!

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