Media studies
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 it mostly draws 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, and information theory.
Origin
Former priest and American educator John Culkin was one of the earliest advocates for the implementation of media studies curriculum in schools. He believed students should be capable of scrutinizing mass media, and valued the application of modern communication techniques within the education system. In 1975, Culkin introduced the first media studies M.A. program in the U.S, which has since graduated more than 2,000 students.Culkin was also responsible for bringing his colleague and fellow media scholar Marshall McLuhan to Fordham University, and subsequently founding the Center for Understanding Media, which became the New School program. Both educators are recognized as pioneers in the discipline, credited with paving the way for media studies curriculum within the education system.
Global contributions and perspectives on media studies
Canada
In his book "Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man", media theorist Marshall McLuhan suggested that "the medium is the message", and that all human artefacts and technologies are media. His book introduced the usage of terms such as "media" into our language along with other precepts, among them "global village" and "Age of Information". A medium is anything that mediates our interaction with the world or other humans. Given this perspective, media study is not restricted to just media of communications but all forms of technology. Media and their users form an ecosystem, and the study of this ecosystem is known as media ecology. Media ecology also holds that our environment ultimately changes due to technology. Griffin, Ledbetter, and Sparks elaborate on this theory in their book, stating "...adding smartphones to a family doesn't create a 'family plus smartphones.' The technology changes the family into something different than what it was before."McLuhan says that the "technique of fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology" shaped the restructuring of human work and association and "the essence of automation technology is the opposite". He uses an example of the electric light to make this connection and to explain how "the medium is the message". The electric light is pure information and it is a medium without a message, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or a name. The characteristic of all media means the "content" of any medium is always another medium. For example, the content of writing is speech, the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph. The change that the medium or technology introduces into human affairs is the "message". If the electric light is used for a Friday night football game or to light up a desk, it could be argued that the content of the electric light is these activities. The fact that it is the medium that shapes and controls the form of human association and action makes it the message. The electric light is overlooked as a communication medium because it does not have any content. It is not until the electric light is used to spell a brand name that it is recognized as a medium. Similar to radio and other mass media, electric light eliminates time and space factors in human association, creating deeper involvement. McLuhan compared the "content" to a juicy piece of meat being carried by a burglar to distract the "watchdog of the mind". The effect of the medium is made strong because it is given another media "content". The content of a movie is a book, play, or maybe even an opera.
McLuhan talks about media being "hot" or "cold" and touches on the principle that distinguishes them from one another. A hot medium extends a single sense in "high definition". High definition refers to the state of being well filled with data. A cool medium is considered "low definition" because a small amount of data/information is given and has to be filled in. Hot media are low in participation, because they give one most of the information while excluding certain information. Meanwhile, cool media are high in participation, because inclusively provides information but relies on the viewer to fill in the blanks. McLuhan used lecturing as an example for hot media and seminars as an example for low media. Using a hot medium in a hot or cool culture makes a difference.
In his book, Empire and Communications, University of Toronto professor Harold Innis highlighted media technologies as a powerful contributor to the rise and collapse of empires. Innis' theory of media bias utilizes historical evidence to argue that a medium will be biased towards either time or space. He claims that this inherent bias will reveal a medium's significance to the development of its civilization. Innis identifies media biased towards time as a medium durable in character like clay, stone, or parchment. Time biased media are heavy and difficult to relocate, which keeps their message centralized and thus maintains economic and social control within the hands of a hierarchical authority structure. He defines media in favor of space as a lighter, more transferable medium like papyrus. Opposite to media in favor of time, Innis explains that the transferable quality of media biased towards space permits civilizations to expand more quickly across vast areas, thus benefiting the growth of sectors like trade. Space biased media influences an empire to decentralize its power and widen its reach of influence. Though these biases are in competition with each other, Innis argued that an empire requires the presence of both time and space biased media to succeed as a lasting civilization.
France
One prominent French media critic is the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who wrote books like On Television. Bourdieu asserts that television provides far less autonomy than we think. From his perspective, the market not only imposes uniformity and banality, but also necessitates a form of invisible censorship. For example, television producers often "pre-interview" participants in news and public affairs programs to ensure that they will speak in simple, attention-grabbing terms. 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.Bourdieu is also remembered in the discipline for his theory of the habitus. In his written work Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu claims an audience's preference in media is shaped by their social context. How an individual interprets and engages with their surroundings, or their habitus, is defined by the lasting and transferable elements of character which structure their consumer preferences. Bourdieu explains that, though durable, the habitus is not set in stone; it instead acts as a "strategy-generating principle" allowing individuals to navigate new and unfamiliar situations.
Bourdieu expanded on the theory of the habitus, introducing his famous term, cultural capital. According to the French sociologist, cultural capital signifies an individual's socially or culturally valuable skills and knowledge. He claims that these competencies are developed through one's upbringing and access to education resources, and can be unconsciously shaped by their social environment. Bourdieu highlights this accumulation of competencies as a determining factor in one's life chances. One's cultural capital, such as a university degree, can lead them to be offered more opportunities, thus linking the concept to both economic and social capital. Bourdieu explains that it is through the content of the different capitals that the habitus will structure an individual's consumer taste.
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 film studies, theater studies, German language and literature studies, and Comparative Literature Studies. This branch has broadened out substantially since the 1990s, causing a culturally-based media studies in Germany to be developed and established.
This plurality of perspectives make it difficult to single out one particular site where the branch of Medienwissenschaft originated. While the Frankfurt-based theatre scholar Hans-Theis Lehmanns' term "post dramatic theater" points directly to the increased blending of co-presence and mediatized material in the German theater since the 1970s, the field of theater studies from the 1990s onwards at the Freie Universität Berlin, led in particular by Erika Fischer-Lichte, showed particular interest in the ways in which theatricality influenced notions of performativity in aesthetic events. Within the field of Film Studies, again, both Frankfurt and Berlin were dominant in the development of new perspectives on moving image media. Heide Schlüpman in Frankfurt and Gertrud Koch , first in Bochum then in Berlin, were key theorists contributing to an aesthetic theory of the cinema as dispositif and the moving image as a medium, particularly in the context of illusion. Many scholars who became known as media scholars in Germany were originally scholars of German, such as Friedrich Kittler, who taught at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and completed both his dissertation and habilitation in the context of Germanistik. One of the early publications in this branch of media studies was a volume edited by Helmut Kreuzer entitled Literature Studies - Media Studies, which summarizes the presentations given at the Düsseldorfer Germanistentag in 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 directly translated to studies, as it invokes both scientific methods and the humanities. Accordingly, German media theory combines philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, and scientific studies with media-specific research.