Rethinking Media Studies And The Digital Revolution

This book offers an important reconsideration of teaching, learning and research in media studies, and provides an overview of some of the key issues, controversies and debates in the field. It argues that, in spite of critical interventions from scholars working both within and outside of media studies, many academics have been slow to respond to the ongoing shifts and transformations in digital media in terms of curriculum design and course content. The book critically engages with and reassesses issues and debates in teaching and learning in the field of media studies in light of wide-scale shifts incurred by digital media, and asks “is media studies still relevant as a subject in its current form?” This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of media studies, media education, cultural studies and popular culture.

This book offers an important reconsideration of teaching, learning and research in media studies, and provides an overview of some of the key issues, controversies and debates in the field. It argues that, in spite of critical interventions from scholars working both within and outside of media studies, many academics have been slow to respond to the ongoing shifts and transformations in digital media in terms of curriculum design and course content. The book critically engages with and reassesses issues and debates in teaching and learning in the field of media studies in light of wide-scale shifts incurred by digital media, and asks is media studies still relevant as a subject in its current form? This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of media studies, media education, cultural studies and popular culture.

The essays in Rethinking Media Change center on a variety of media forms at moments of disruption and cultural transformation. The editors' introduction sketches an aesthetics of media transition—patterns of development and social dispersion that operate across eras, media forms, and cultures. The book includes case studies of such earlier media as the book, the phonograph, early cinema, and television. It also examines contemporary digital forms, exploring their promise and strangeness. A final section probes aspects of visual culture in such environments as the evolving museum, movie spectaculars, and "the virtual window." The contributors reject apocalyptic scenarios of media revolution, demonstrating instead that media transition is always a mix of tradition and innovation, an accretive process in which emerging and established systems interact, shift, and collude with one another.

This book reconsiders media studies from different philosophical and theoretical perspectives from around the world. It brings together diverse views and visions from thinkers such as Sr Aubrobindo, Jurgen Habermas, Paul Ricoeur, Pope Francis, and Satyajit Ray, among others. The authors focus on the issues of ethics, aesthetics, meditation, and communication in relation to media studies and explore the links between media and mindfulness. The volume includes case studies from India, United States, Switzerland, and Denmark and presents empirical works on new horizons of critical media studies in different fields such as American news media and creative media lab. A unique contribution, this book will be indispensable for students and researchers of journalism, communication studies, social media, behavioural sciences, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, and development studies.

Leading scholars of media and public life grapple with how to make sense of major transformations rocking media and politics.

This agenda-setting volume brings together leading scholars of media and public life to grapple with how media research can make sense of the massive changes rocking politics and the media world. Each author identifies a 'most pressing' question for scholars working at the intersection of journalism, politics, advocacy, and technology. The authors then suggest different research approaches designed to highlight real-world stakes and offer a path toward responsive, productive action. Chapters explore our 'datafied' lives, journalism's deep responsibilities and daunting challenges, media's inclusions (and non-inclusions), the riddle of digital engagement, and the obligations scholars must attempt to meet in an era of networked information. The result is a rich forum that addresses how media transformations carry serious implications for public life. Original, provocative, and generative, this book is international in its orientation and makes a compelling case for public scholarship.

Media Studies 2.0 offers an exploration of the digital revolution and its consequences for media and communication studies, arguing that the new era requires an upgraded discipline: a media studies 2.0. The book traces the history of mass-media and computing, exploring their merger at the end of the twenty-century and the material, ecological, cultural and personal elements of this digital transformation. It considers the history of media and communication studies, arguing that the academic discipline was a product of the analogue, broadcast-era, emerging in the early twentieth century as a response to the success of newspapers, radio and cinema and reflecting that era back in its organisation, themes and concepts. Digitalisation, however, takes us beyond this analogue era (media studies 1.0) into a new, post-broadcast era. Merrin argues that the digital-era demands an upgraded academic discipline: one reflecting the real media life of its students and teaching the key skills needed by the twenty-first century user. Media 2.0 demand a media studies 2.0 This original and critical overview of contemporary developments within media studies is ideal for general students of media and communication, as well as those specifically studying new and digital media.

Re-Inventing the Media provides a highly original re-thinking of media studies for the contemporary post-broadcast, post-analogue, and post-mass media era. While media and cultural studies has made much of the changes to the media landscape that have come from digital technologies, these constitute only part of the transformations that have taken place in what amounts of a reinvention of the media over the last two decades. Graeme Turner takes on the task of re-thinking how media studies approaches the whole of the contemporary media-scape by focusing on three large, cross-platform, and transnational themes: the decline of the mass media paradigm, the ongoing restructuring of the relations between the media and the state, and the structural and social consequences of celebrity culture. By addressing the fact that the reinvention of the media is not simply a matter of globalising markets or the take-up of technological change, Turner is able to explore the more fundamental movements and widespread trends that have significantly influenced the character of what the contemporary media have become, how it is structured, and how it is used. Re-Inventing the Media is a must-read for both students and scholars of media, culture and communication studies.

The digital infrastructure of media production, dissemination and consumption is becoming increasingly complex, presenting the challenge of how we should research the digital journalism environment. Digital journalism takes many forms – we therefore need to revise, improve, adjust and even invent methods to understand emerging forms of journalism. In this book, scholars at the forefront of methodological innovations in digital journalism research share their insights on how to collect, process and analyse the diverse expressions of digital journalism, including online news, search results, hyperlinks and social media posts. As digital journalism content often comes in the form of big data, many of these new approaches depart from the traditional methods used in media research in significant ways. As we move towards new ways of understanding digital journalism, the methods developed for such purposes also need to be grounded in scientific rigour. This book aims to share some of the emerging processes by which these methods, tools and approaches are designed, implemented and validated. As such, this book not only constitutes a benchmark for thinking about research methods in digital journalism, it also provides an entry point for graduate students and seasoned scholars aiming to do research on digital journalism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

This academic analysis explores social media, specifically examining its influence on the cultural, political, and economic organization of our society and the role capitalism plays within its domain. In this examination of society and technology, author and educator Derek Hrynyshyn explores the ways in which social media shapes popular culture and how social power is expressed within it. He debunks the misperception of the medium as a social equalizer—a theory drawn from the fact that content is created by its users—and compares it to mass media, identifying the capitalist-driven mechanisms that drive both social media and mass media. The work captures his assessment that social media legitimizes the inequities among the social classes rather than challenging them. The book scrutinizes the difference between social media and mass media, the relationship between technologies and social change, and the role of popular culture in the structure of political and economic power. A careful look at social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google suggests that these tools are systems of surveillance, monitoring everyday activities for the benefit of advertisers and the networks themselves. Topics covered within the book's 10 detailed chapters include privacy online, freedom of expression, piracy, the digital divide, fragmentation, and social cohesion.