Media Studies is a growing field in universities and colleges, and is seen as especially relevant in a time of increasing technological mediation and change.
However, the discipline means different things to different scholars. It encompasses traditions such as communications, cultural studies, and political economy, schools of thought which are sometimes even hostile to one another.
Communications and Mass Media Research
Many Media Studies faculties evolved from university Communications departments. After the First World War, government interest in mass media, especially advertising, and its effects led to positivist studies by journalists and social scientists alike. Walter Lippmann's' Public Opinion (1922), which coined the modern meaning of stereotype (as a kind of mental image), is a representative text of the time.
Communications research, especially its quantitative method, is still a large of part of Media Studies. In addition to media effects, objects of study in this branch of the discipline include market research, public relations and other professional or commercial projects. Information technology or library sciences can also be grouped under this part of Media Studies.
Post-Modernism and Cultural Studies
Another strain comes from cultural studies, itself an offshoot of literature and film studies. Postmodernist critics such as Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard loom large for adherents to this branch of Media Studies, which often focuses on interpretation of representative texts or phenomena. Other more idiosyncratic media theorists, such as Marshall McLuhan, are sometimes included in the cultural studies camp too.
Postmodernists aren't as interested in the social science aspects of media studies, preferring methods such as discourse analysis. Popular culture is a favorite object of study. But there are disagreements among scholars about just what counts as popular culture (as opposed to purely commercial culture) and how "celebratory" criticism of it should therefore be.
Political Economy and Critical Materialism
A final subdivision of Media Studies is political economy, which takes its cues from European political philosophy. Stressing history and a dialectical approach, political economist media critics trace their thought back to Karl Marx through Marxists such as Theodor Adorno and Jurgen Habermas of the "Frankfurt School."
Non-Marxists, such as the economist and communications theorist Harold Innis, are also foundational for this part of Media Studies. What the political economists share is a focus on critical materialism and social change. Power structures, monopolies of knowledge, and hegemonic processes are their objects of study.
Media Studies as a Unified Discipline
With so many diverse interests, Media Studies scholars from different branches of the discipline do not always get along. Political economists sometimes accuse communications researchers and postmodernists alike of ignoring important social justice issues. Postmodernists, meanwhile, reject the "oppressive" grand narratives of some critical materialists.
However, no one school of thought under the umbrella of Media Studies addresses all the issues concerning communication, mediation, culture, and social organization. At its best, Media Studies combines the insights of many intellectual traditions to come to a better understanding of modern civilization.
Luke Arnott - Luke Arnott has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Western Ontario, where he is currently enrolled in the ...
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