Everything about Media Studies totally explained
Media Studies is the study of the constitution and history of various media, as well as their effects on history and on the present day. Media studies employ theories and methods from a number of fields which include
psychology,
political science,
political economy,
communication,
sociology,
social theory,
literary theory,
social psychology,
media influence,
film and video studies,
cultural anthropology,
cultural studies,
philosophy,
museum studies,
art history and
criticism,
information theory, and
economics.Accordingly Media Studies, a comparably young academic field, differ in the extent to which media are thematic and to what extent a unified definition of media is attempted.
Media Studies, in the tradition of social sciences like
communication studies,
sociology and
economics, generally focus on
mass media, their political, social, economic and cultural role and impact in creating and distributing content to media audiences.
Media Studies, in the tradition of humanities like
literary theory,
film and video studies,
cultural studies and
philosophy, focus on the constitution of media and question in how far they shape what is regarded as knowledge and as communicable.
History of media studies
Key themes in media studies
In addition to the
interdisciplinary nature of the academic field, popular understandings of media studies encompass:
Although most production and journalism courses incorporate media studies for contextual purposes (see
Fourth estate), the terms are not interchangeable.
Separate strands are being identified within media studies, such as
audience studies,
producer studies,
television studies and
radio studies.
Film studies is often considered a separate discipline, though television and video games studies grew out of it, as made evident by the application of basic critical theories such as
psychoanalysis,
feminism and
Marxism.
Critical media theory looks at how the corporate ownership of media production and distribution affects society, and provides a common ground to social conservatives (concerned by the effects of media on the traditional family) and liberals and socialists (concerned by the corporatization of social discourse). The study of the effects and techniques of advertising forms a cornerstone of media studies.
Contemporary media studies includes the analysis of
new media with emphasis on the
internet,
video games,
mobile devices,
interactive television, and other forms of
mass media which developed from the
1990s. Because these new technologies allow instant communication across the world (chat rooms and instant messaging, online video games, video conferencing), interpersonal communication is an important element in new media studies. Another factor influencing contemporary media studies is globalization: the debate of globalization as a historical event or as a social construction rages on .
It has been argued that media studies hasn't fully acknowledged the changes which the internet and digital interactive media have brought about, seeing these as an 'add-on'.
David Gauntlett has argued for a '
Media Studies 2.0' which fully recognises the ways in which media has changed, and that traditional boundaries between 'audiences' and 'producers' has collapsed.
Political communication and political economy
From the beginning, media studies are closely related to politics and wars (Guo & Wu, 2005, p. 276) such as campaign research and war propaganda. Political communication mainly studies the connections among politicians, voters and media. It focused on the media effects. There are four main media effects theories:
magic bullet,
two-step flow of communications (Lazarsfeld, 1948), limited effects (Lang & Lang, 1953), and the
spiral of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984). Also, many scholars studied the technique of political communication such as rhetoric, symbolism and etc.
In the last quarter century,
political economy has played a major part in media studies literature. The theory gained notoriety in media studies particularly with the publication of
Edward S. Herman and
Noam Chomsky’s, published in 1988. In the book, the authors discuss a theory of how the United States’ media industry operates, which they term a “propaganda model.” The model describes a “decentralized and non-conspiratorial market system of control and processing, although at times the government or one or more private actors may take initiatives and mobilize co-ordinated elite handling of an issue."
Media Studies in Germany
In Germany two main streams of Media Studies can be identified. The older stream and dominant stream is comparable to
Communication Studies. Pioneered by
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the 1940s this stream studies mass media, its institutions and its effects on society and individuals.
Since the 1980s a second stream of Media Studies has developed. Emerging from Germanic and Literature Studies and pioneered by
Friedrich Kittler,
Hartmut Winkler,
Georg Christoph Tholen,
Norbert Bolz and
Bernhard Siegert Media are investigated as means of representation of knowledge. Often applying historical research and utilizing and criticizing post-structuralist French theory media are investigated in their structural function in enabling and forming knowledge and its communication. Discourses are analyzed for their underlying medial a priori (German: 'mediales apriori')
This stream of Media Studies has become institutionalized during the second half of the 1990s when numerous departments for media studies and media history have been established at German universities.
Media Studies in India
The media industry is growing in
India at the rate of 20 percent per annum. Together, entertainment and media form the country's sixth biggest industry, with 3.5 million people working in it. Within the next 4-5 years, the industry is expected to gross eighty thousand
crores (800 billion
rupees) annually. Additionally, the third biggest media institute of the world, the
Asian Academy Of Film & Television, is also based in India.
Media Studies in the UK
In the UK, media studies developed in the 1960s from the academic study of
English, and from
literary criticism more broadly. The key date, according to Andrew Crisell, is 1959:
when Joseph Trenaman left the BBC's Further Education Unit to become the first holder of the Granada Research Fellowship in Television at Leeds University. Soon after in 1966, the Centre for Mass Communication Research was founded at Leicester University, and degree programmes in media studies began to sprout at polytechnics and other universities during the 1970s and 1980s.
Cultural Studies
The
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was founded by
Richard Hoggart and
Stuart Hall at the
University of Birmingham in 1964. As the appeal of Marxism waned in the 1960s, the CCCS took critical theory in new directions, raising questions about media and power. There was the shift of paradigm from ethnography to Hall's
semiology. The CCCS was pivotal in developing the field, producing a number of key researchers. Under the directorship of Stuart Hall, who wrote the seminal
Encoding/Decoding model, the centre produced key
empirical research about the relationship between texts and audiences. Amongst these was
The Nationwide Audience by
David Morley and
Charlotte Brunsdon. Cultural studies revamped the definition of culture. The definition of culture changed from culture being viewed as good/bad to an overall view of social interests and relations.
Criticism of Media Studies in the UK Media
In the
UK, Media Studies is regularly the victim of jokes and cynical attitudes, often being labelled as a
Mickey Mouse subject. It receives many of the criticisms directed at sociology scholars during the 70s and 80s.
In 2000, England's Chief Schools Inspector,
Chris Woodhead suggested that media studies is a "one way ticket to the dole queue." There is, he says, a "profound scepticism as to whether these courses teach students the skills and understanding they want". and has cited media studies as an example of a degree thought by some journalists to be "complete rubbish" but which was often "a good way of getting employment."
Its relation to polytechnics, and subsequently the
post-1992 New Universities, are also a target for ridicule. The now annual
moral panic in the UK every August when
GCSE and
A-level results are released normally focuses upon Media Studies as an example of the alleged
dumbing down of education.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Media Studies'.
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