Media studies is an area of scholarly inquiry approached from both humanities and social science perspectives that considers the nature and effects of mass media upon individuals and society, as well as analysing actual media content and representations. A cross-disciplinary field, media studies uses techniques and theorists from sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, art theory, information theory, and economics. The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view. ... The social sciences are a group of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. ... Effects theory is the sociological or media studies theory that exposure to representations of violence in any of various media causes (or tends to cause) increased aggression or violence in the audience / consumer. ... Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ... Content can mean Comfort and a feeling of satisfaction Creations, as in open content or free content. ... It is generally agreed that people know and understand the world and reality through the act of naming it; thus, through language and representations (Oxford English Dictionary, cited in Vukcevich 2002). ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Cultural studies combines sociology, social theory, literary theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in industrial societies. ... Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, human or person) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ... Psychology (Gk: psyche, soul or mind + logos, speech) is an academic and applied field involving the study of the mind, brain, and behavior, both human and nonhuman. ... Venus de Milo exhibited in the Louvre museum, France. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Buyers bargain for good prices while sellers put forth their best front in Chichicastenango Market, Guatemala. ...

Development

Media studies pioneers include Marshall McLuhan, Stuart Hall, Ien Ang and Jean Baudrillard. Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" marks one of the first major interrogations of the play between technical media and culture. Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar, professor of English literature, literary critic, and communications theorist, who is one of the founders of the study of media ecology and is today an honorary guru among technophiles. ... Stuart Hall (born 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a cultural theorist from the United Kingdom. ... Ien Ang is a scientist in Media Studies and Audience Studies. ... Jean Baudrillard (born July 29, 1929) is a cultural theorist, philosopher, and sociologist. ... ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is a 1935/1936 essay by German cultural critic Walter Benjamin, which has been influential in the fields of culture theory and media theory. ... The word culture, from the Latin colo, -ere, with its root meaning to cultivate, generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. ...

In the UK, media studies emerged in the 1960s from the academic study of English, and from literary criticism more broadly. It tended to grow through colleges and polytechnics, rather than through established universities. Nevertheless, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), founded by Richard Hoggart at the University of Birmingham in 1964, was a notable exception. The academic discipline of English studies explores the production and analysis of texts produced in English (or in areas of the world in which English is a common mode of communication). ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... The term polytechnic, from the Greek πολύ polú meaning many and τεχνικός tekhnikós meaning arts, is commonly used in many countries to describe an institution that delivers technical education, other countries do not use the term and use alternative terminology. ... The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was a research centre at the University of Birmingham. ... Richard Hoggart (born September 24, 1918) is a British sociologist, widely known for his 1957 book The Uses of Literacy. ... The University of Birmingham is an English university in the city of Birmingham. ...

Media studies can partially be understood as a response to the McCarthyist paranoia of the influences of the mass media. In the UK, Mary Whitehouse's right-wing National Viewers' and Listeners' Association was concerned at the growing 'permissiveness' of broadcasting, and in the US a number of pressure groups have campaigned against the supposed corrupting influence of popular media - in particular on children. Joseph Raymond McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908–May 2, 1957) was a Republican Senator from the state of Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. ... Mary Whitehouse in her later years. ... Mediawatch-uk, formerly the National Viewers and Listeners Association or the NVLA is a pressure group in the United Kingdom, which seeks to reduce what it sees as harmful portrayal of violence, bad language, sex, blasphemy and homosexuality in UK broadcast media. ...

The critical paradigm was formed in the early 1970s, raising questions about media and power. 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 Project by David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon. Stuart Hall (born 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a cultural theorist from the United Kingdom. ... Empirical is an adjective often used in conjunction with science, both the natural and social sciences, which means an observation or experiment based upon experience that is capable of being verified or disproved. ... In language, text is a broad term for something that contains words to express something. ...

For several decades, discussion of popular media was frequently dominated by the debate about 'media effects', in particular the link between screen violence and real-life aggression. David Gauntlett's article "Ten Things Wrong With the Media Effects Model" (1998), outlines significant problems with the way previous research had been conducted; in subsequent work, Gauntlett instead proposes new creative research methods in which participants are invited to make media artefacts themselves, a reflective process which is said to produce more nuanced insights. Effects theory is the sociological or media studies theory that exposure to representations of violence in any of various media causes (or tends to cause) increased aggression or violence in the audience / consumer. ... David Gauntlett (b. ... David Gauntlett (b. ...

Strands

In addition to the interdisciplinary nature of the academic field, popular understandings of media studies encompass: Interdisciplinary work is that which integrates concepts across different disciplines. ...

• media production
• mass communication
• journalism

Although most production and journalism courses incorporate media studies for contextual purposes (see Fourth estate), the terms are not interchangeable. Mass Communication is the term used to describe the academic study of various means by which individuals and entities relay information to large segments of the population all at once through mass media. ... Journalism is a discipline of collecting, analyzing, verifying, and presenting information gathered regarding current events, including trends, issues and people. ... A reporter The term Fourth Estate refers to the press, both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues. ...

Separate strands are being identified within media studies, such as Audience Studies, Television Studies and Radio Studies. Film studies is a separate discipline, with a different history and focus. Media audience studies is the academic study of media audiences, connected with the academic disciplines of sociology, psychology and media studies. ... Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. ... Film theory seeks to develop concise, systematic concepts that apply to the study of film/cinema as art. ...

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, of course, with emphasis on the internet, video games, mobile devices, interactive television, and other forms of mass media which developed from the 1990s. Tom McPhail's theory of electronic colonialism has gained some international recognition. New Media is a relatively new field of study that has developed around cultural practices with the computer playing a central role as the medium for production, storage and distribution. ... Computer and video games A screenshot of Tetris for the Nintendo Game Boy A console game (better known as a video game) is a form of interactive multimedia used for entertainment, which consists of a moveable image displayed on a screen that is usually controlled and manipulated using a handheld... Interactive television describes any number of efforts to allow viewers to interact with television content as they view. ... Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ... This article is about the year. ... Tom McPhail is professor of media studies at the University of Missouri in St. ... Electronic colonialism theory was first started by Tom McPhail, a Canadian who began his career with Marshall McLuhan. ...

Derogatory attitudes

In the UK, Media Studies is regularly the victim of jokes and cynical attitudes, often being labelled as a Mickey Mouse subject. It is possible that media studies is singled out in the media because most established journalists and broadcasters are either not degree educated or achieved degrees in classical subjects, such as English literature. Perhaps ironically, Media Studies is the victim of the ideology and power relations it attempts to expose. 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 (Barker, 2001). Mickey Mouse degrees is the dysphemism given by the national tabloids of Great Britain, nearly always in the summer the low point of the news cycle, to university degree courses deemed worthless or irrelevant. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. ... In the UK, the Post-1992 universities or Modern Universities are the former polytechnics or colleges of higher education that were given the status of universities by John Majors government in 1992 or colleges that have been granted university status since then: Post-1992 or Modern Universities Abertay University... A moral panic is a mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group of people, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. ... The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) (Welsh: Tystysgrif Gyffredin Addysg Uwchradd (TGAU)) is the name of a set of British qualifications, taken by secondary school students at age 14–16 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. ... An A-level, short for Advanced Level, is a General Certificate of Education usually taken during Further Education and after GCSEs. ... Dumbing down is a usually derogatory term which refers to the simplifying of a subject, often education, news and TV amongst others. ...

However, media studies academics such as Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster, have argued that the interdisciplinary nature of Media Studies means that graduates are knowledgeable in a wide variety of areas. Marylebone campus The University of Westminster is a British university in London, formed in 1992 as a result of the Further and Higher Education Act, 1992, which allowed the London Polytechnic (Polytechnic of Central London or PCL ) to rename itself as a university. ... Interdisciplinary work is that which integrates concepts across different disciplines. ...

See also

• Mass media
• Mass communication
• Multimedia literacy
• Journalism
  • Yellow Journalism
• Transparency (humanities)

Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ... Mass Communication is the term used to describe the academic study of various means by which individuals and entities relay information to large segments of the population all at once through mass media. ... Multimedia literacy is a new aspect of literacy that is being recognised as technology expands the way people communicate. ... Journalism is a discipline of collecting, analyzing, verifying, and presenting information gathered regarding current events, including trends, issues and people. ... In journalism, yellow journalism is a pejorative reference given to various practices or tendencies of news media organizations which, by the standards of journalistic professionalism, are considered to be unprofessional and detrimental to the principles of journalistic integrity as a whole. ... In the physical sciences, specifically in optics, a transparent physical object is one that can be seen through. ...

References

• Barker, Martin (with Julian Petley) (2001) "On the problems of being a 'trendy travesty'" In: M. Barker and J. Petley (eds) Ill effects: the media/violence debate. (2nd ed.) London: Routledge. pp. 202-224. ISBN 0415225132
• Crisell, Andrew (2002) An Introductory History of British Broadcasting. (2nd ed.) London: Routledge. ISBN 0415247926
• Moores, Shaun (1993) Interpreting Audiences: The Ethnography of Media Consumption. London: Sage. ISBN 0803984472

External links

• Theory.org.uk: media studies website by David Gauntlett
• TIMEfound: The Interactive Media Education Foundation
• MANA - the Media Alliance for New Activism
• LanguageMonitor: Media Metrics and Analysis
• "Media Studies? Discuss.", BBC News, 18 August 2005.: informed article by John Ellis about the "predictable" annual debate over the subject
• MediaStudies.com: Excellent page with links to a variety of news and other media sites.
• mediaedu.co.uk: New Media and Communication Studies website by Richard Gent for KS4 and KS5 students which also acts as a portal.
• An introduction to Media Studies