Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content,
history and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media
studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities,
but mostly from its core disciplines of mass communication, communication,
communication sciences and communication studies. Researchers may also develop
and employ theories and methods from disciplines including cultural studies,
rhetoric, philosophy, literary theory, psychology, political science, political
economy, economics, sociology, anthropology, social theory, art history
and criticism, film theory, feminist theory, and information theory.
McLuhan's aphorism "the medium is the message" was not restricted to mass
media, and for him all human artifacts and technologies are media. A medium is
anything that mediates our interaction with the world or other humans. Given
this perspective of McLuhan's media theory is not restricted to just media
of communications but all forms of technology. Another insight of McLuhan's
relevant to media theory is that media and their users form an ecosystem and
the study of this ecosystem is known as media ecology.
History Media studies throughout the world
= Australia= Media is studied as a broad subject in
most states in Australia, with the state of Victoria being a world leader in
curriculum development. Media studies in Australia was first developed as an area
of study in Victorian universities in the early 1960s, and in secondary
schools in the mid 1960s. Today, almost all Australian
universities teach media studies. According to the Government of
Australia's "Excellence in Research for Australia" report, the leading
universities in the country for media studies are Monash University, QUT,
RMIT, University of Melbourne, University of Queensland and UTS.
In secondary schools, an early film studies course first began being taught
as part of the Victorian junior secondary curriculum during the mid
1960s. And, by the early 1970s, an expanded media studies course was being
taught. The course became part of the senior secondary curriculum in the
1980s. It has since become, and continues to be, a strong component of
the VCE. Notable figures in the development of the Victorian secondary
school curriculum were the long time Rusden College media teacher Peter
Greenaway, Trevor Barr and later John Murray.
Today, Australian states and territories that teach media studies at a secondary
level are Australian Capital Territory, Northern Territory, Queensland, South
Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. Media studies does not appear
to be taught in the state of New South Wales at a secondary level.
In Victoria, the VCE media studies course is structured as: Unit 1 -
Representation, Technologies of Representation, and New Media; Unit 2 -
Media Production, Australian Media Organisations; Unit 3 - Narrative Texts,
Production Planning; and Unit 4 - Media Process, Social Values, and Media
Influence. Media studies also form a major part of the primary and junior
secondary curriculum, and includes areas such as photography, print media and
television. Victoria also hosts the peak media
teaching body known as ATOM which publishes Metro and Screen Education
magazines. = China=
There are two universities in China that specialize in media studies.
Communication University of China, formerly known as the Beijing
Broadcasting Institute, that dates back to 1954. CUC has 15,307 full-time
students, including 9264 undergraduates, 3512 candidates for doctor and master's
degrees and 16780 students in programs of continuing education. The other
university known for media studies in China is Zhejiang University of Media
and Communications which has campuses in Hangzhou and Tongxiang. Almost 10,000
full-time students are currently studying in over 50 programs at the 13
Colleges and Schools of ZUMC. Both institutions have produced some of
China's brightest broadcasting talents for television as well as leading
journalists at magazines and newspapers. = France=
One prominent French media critic is the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu who wrote
among other books On Television. Bourdieu's analysis is that television
provides far less autonomy, or freedom, than we think. In his view, the market
not only imposes uniformity and banality, but also a form of invisible
censorship. When, for example, television producers "pre-interview"
participants in news and public affairs programs, to insure that they will speak
in simple, attention-grabbing terms, and when the search for viewers leads to an
emphasis on the sensational and the spectacular, people with complex or
nuanced views are not allowed a hearing. = Germany=
In Germany two main branches of Media Theory or Media Studies can be
identified. The first major branch of media theory
has its roots in the humanities and cultural studies, such as theater
studies and German language and literature studies. This branch has
broadened out substantially since the 1990s. And it is on this initial basis
that media studies in Germany has primarily developed and established
itself. One of the early publications in this
new direction is a volume edited by Helmut Kreuzer, Literature Studies -
Media Studies, which summarizes the presentations given at the Düsseldorfer
Germanistentag 1976. The second branch of media studies in
Germany is comparable to Communication Studies. Pioneered by Elisabeth
Noelle-Neumann in the 1940s, this branch studies mass media, its institutions and
its effects on society and individuals. The German Institute for Media and
Communication Policy, founded in 2005 by media scholar Lutz Hachmeister, is one
of the few independent research institutions that is dedicated to issues
surrounding media and communications policies.
The term Wissenschaft cannot be translated straightforwardly as studies,
as it calls to mind both scientific methods and the humanities. Accordingly,
German media theory combines philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, and scienctific
studies with media-specific research. Medienwissenschaften is currently one of
the most popular courses of study at universities in Germany, with many
applicants mistakenly assuming that studying it will automatically lead to a
career in TV or other media. This has led to widespread disillusionment, with
students blaming the universities for offering highly theoretical course
content. The universities maintain that practical journalistic training is not
the aim of the academic studies they offer.
= 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 annually. With a view to making the best use of
communication facilities for information, publicity and development,
the Government of India in 1962-63 sought the advice of the Ford
Foundation/UNESCO team of internationally known mass communication
specialists who recommended the setting up of a national institute for training,
teaching and research in mass communication.
Anna University is the first university to take up the idea of India's
University Grants Commission to start Master of Science in Electronic Media
programmes. It offers a five-year integrated programme and a two-year
programme in Electronic Media. The Department of Media Sciences was started
in January 2002, branching off from the UGC's Educational Multimedia Research
Centre. National Institute of Open Schooling, the world's largest open
schooling system, offers Mass Communication as a subject of studies at
senior secondary level. = Netherlands=
In the Netherlands, media studies are split into several academic courses such
as communication sciences, communication- and information sciences,
communication and media, media and culture or theater, film and television
sciences. Whereas communication sciences focuses on the way people communicate,
be it mediated or unmediated, media studies tends to narrow the
communication down to just mediated communication. However, it would be a
mistake to consider media studies a specialism of communication sciences,
since media make up just a small portion of the overall course. Indeed, both
studies tend to borrow elements from one another.
Communication sciences can be studied at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Radboud
University, Tilburg University, University of Amsterdam, University of
Groningen, University of Twente, Roosevelt Academy, University of
Utrecht, VU University Amsterdam and Wageningen University and Research
Centre. Media studies can be studied at the
University of Amsterdam, VU University Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam
and the University of Utrecht. = New Zealand=
Media Studies in New Zealand is very healthy, especially due to the NZ film
industry and is taught at both secondary and tertiary education institutes. Media
Studies in NZ can be regarded as a singular success, with the subject
well-established in the tertiary sector. Different Media Studies courses can
offer students a range of specialisations- such as cultural
studies, media theory and analysis, practical film-making, journalism and
communications studies. = Pakistan=
Media Studies Program is offered in Pakistan by Karachi University Karachi
university, Pakistan this was formerly known as Mass communication. Riphah
International University Islamabad is also offering Undergraduate and
Postgraduate degree programs in Media Studies, Mass Communications and Media
Production. Riphah International University also have its own broadcast
facilities such as FM 102.2. Kinnaird College, Lahore and Szabist University
also offers undergraduate program Szabist University in various cities
across Pakistan, Dubai and UAE. = Switzerland=
In Switzerland, media and communication studies are offered by several higher
education institutions including the International University in Geneva.
= 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.
James Halloran at Leicester University is credited with much influence in the
development of media studies and communication studies, as the head of
the university's Centre for Mass Communication Research, and founder of
the International Association for Media and Communication Research. Media
Studies is now taught all over the UK. It is taught at Key Stages 1– 3, Entry
Level, GCSE and at A level and the Scottish Qualifications Authority offers
formal qualifications at a number of different levels. It is offered through
a large area of exam boards including AQA and WJEC.
= United States= Mass communication, Communication
studies or simply 'Communication' may be more popular names than “media studies”
for academic departments in the United States. However, the focus of such
programs sometimes excludes certain media—film, book publishing, video
games, etc. The title “media studies” may be used alone, to designate film
studies and rhetorical or critical theory, or it may appear in combinations
like “media studies and communication” to join two fields or emphasize a
different focus. In 1999, the MIT Comparative Media
Studies program started under the leadership of Henry Jenkins, since
growing into a graduate program, MIT's largest humanities major, and, following
a 2012 merger with the Writing and Humanistic Studies program, a roster of
twenty faculty, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz, science
fiction writer Joe Haldeman, games scholar T. L. Taylor, and media scholars
William Uricchio, Edward Schiappa, and Heather Hendershot. Now named
Comparative Media Studies/Writing, the department places an emphasis on what
Jenkins and colleagues had termed "applied humanities": it hosts several
research groups for civic media, digital humanities, games, computational media,
documentary, and mobile design, and these groups are used to provide
graduate students with research assistantships to cover the cost of
tuition and living expenses. The incorporation of Writing and Humanistic
Studies also placed MIT's Science Writing program, Writing Across the
Curriculum, and Writing and Communications Center under the same
roof. Formerly an interdisciplinary major at
the University of Virginia the Department of Media Studies was
officially established in 2001 and has quickly grown to wide recognition. This
is partly thanks to the acquisition of Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural
historian and media scholar, as well as the Inaugural Verklin Media Policy and
Ethics Conference, endowed by the CEO of Canoe Ventures and UVA alumnus David
Verklin. In 2010, a group of undergraduate students in the Media
Studies Department established the Movable Type Academic Journal, the first
ever undergraduate academic journal of its kind. The department is expanding
rapidly and doubled in size in 2011. Brooklyn College, part of the City
University of New York, has been offering graduate studies in television
and media since 1961. Currently, the Department of Television and Radio
administers an MS in Media Studies, and hosts the Center for the Study of World
Television. The University of Southern California
has three distinct centers for media studies: the Center for Visual
Anthropology, the Institute for Media Literacy at the School of Cinematic Arts
and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
University of California, Irvine had in Mark Poster one of the first and
foremost theorists of media culture in the US, and can boast a strong
Department of Film & Media Studies. University of California, Berkeley has
three institutional structures within which media studies can take place: the
department of Film and Media, including famous theorists as Mary Ann Doane and
Linda Williams, the Center for New Media, and a long established
interdisciplinary program formerly titled Mass Communications, which
recently changed its name to Media Studies, dropping any connotations which
accompany the term “Mass” in the former title. Until recently, Radford
University in Virginia used the title "media studies" for a department that
taught practitioner-oriented major concentrations in journalism,
advertising, broadcast production and Web design. In 2008, those programs were
combined with a previous department of communication to create a School of
Communication. The University of Denver has a renowned
program for digital media studies. It is an interdisciplinary program combining
Communications, Computer Science, and the arts.
In 2002 Bernard Luskin of Fielding Graduate University established an EdD
program in Media Studies and a PhD program in Media Psychology with a
concentration in Media Studies. Courses in Media Studies were started by Luskin
at Touro University Worldwide in 2009. See also
Anthropology of media Journalism
Media ecology Mass media
Media culture Mass communication
Multimedia literacy Transparency
Media Industries Research Media literacy
Media education Media psychology
Harold Innis's Time- and space-bias Market for loyalties theory
Marshall McLuhan's tetrad of media effects
Mediatization Media-system dependency
Media echo chamber Narcotizing Dysfunction
Social aspects of television Sociology
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Uses and gratifications theory References
External links ‘Media Studies: Text, Production and
Context' - How to do Media Studies by Paul Long and Tim Wall from Birmingham
City University. The Media Literacy of Primary School
Children - How far do Primary School children have the knowledge and skills
to access media, make sense of the representations and images produced and
to create their own? by Grant Strudley, University of Reading'