Understanding Media Studies

Mapping the Field

September 19, 2011
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Connecting Your Own Interests to the Field

Linking Last Weeks Lesson to This Weeks Conferences Managing Your Web Presence

Building On Whats Already Out There

Finding Available Resources Library Resources Quick Overview

Mapping the Field

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Conferences
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May 13-15, 2011 :: Massachusetts Institute for Technology :: Call for Papers - Deadline: March 4, 2011. Has the digital age confirmed and exponentially increased the cultural instability and creative destruction that are often said to define advanced capitalism? Does living in a digital age mean we may live and die in what the novelist Thomas Pynchon has called a ceaseless spectacle of transition? The nearly limitless range of design options and communication choices available now and in the future is both exhilarating and challenging, inciting innovation and creativity but also false starts, incompatible systems, planned obsolescence. For this seventh Media in Transition conference we want to focus directly on our core topic the experience of transition. Our first conference in 1999 considered this subject, of course. But that was before Facebook, iPhones, BitTorrent, IPTV and many other changes. How are we coping with the instability of platforms? How are the classroom, the newsroom, the corporate office exploiting digital systems and responding to the imperative for constant upgrades. Our libraries and archives? Our public entertainments? Are new technologies changing the experience of reading? The experience of watching movies or television programs? How stable, how durable are current or emerging systems? How relevant are earlier periods of media change to our current experience of ongoing instability and transformation?

We welcome submissions from scholars and teachers in all fields as well as media-makers, producers, designers and industry professionals. Possible topics include: Technologies of reading The future and fate of media studies Narrative across media Analog media in the connected era Emerging forms of journalism and community engagement New questions, new paradigms for media history Reappraising divides, digital, generational, and gendered Television: a medium of constant change? Rethinking access and restriction in the digital age The migration of print culture to digital form: promises and problems Oral cultures and digital cultures The advent of the book Corporate strategies for the digital age Short abstracts of about 250 words for papers or panels can be sent via email to mit7@mit.edu no later than Friday, March 4, 2011.

Making Yourself Known to the Field

Via Library of the Living Dead, McPherson College

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James R. Ackerman & Robert W. Karrow, Jr. Maps: Finding Our Place in the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
Janet Abrams & Peter Hall, Eds., Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies and Territories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006). Rick Altman Wither Film Studies (in a Post-Film Studies World) Cinema Journal 49: 1 (Fall 2009): 131-135. Dudley Andrew, The Core and Flow of Film Studies Critical Inquiry 35 (Summer 2009): 879-915. Minna Aslama, Kalle Siira, Ronald Rice, Pekka Aula, Mapping Communication and Media Research in the U.S. Communication Research Centre, University of Helsinki, Research Report (February 2007). James Beniger, Communication Embrace the Subject, not the Field Journal of Communication 43:3 (Summer 1993): 18+
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Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York; Verso, 2002).
James Carey, The Chicago School and the History of Mass Communication Research In Eve Stryker Munson & Catherine A. Warren, Eds., James Carey: A Critical Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997): 19, 24. John Culkin, Why Study the Media? excerpt from doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education (1964): http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article430.html Peter Decherney, Inventing Film Study and Its Object at Columbia University, 1915-1938 Film History 12:4 (2000): 443-460.

Brenda Dervin and Mei Song, Communication as a Field Historical Origins, Diversity as Strength/Weakness, Orientation Toward Research in the Public Interest: 54 Brief Ruminations from Field Grandparents, Parents, and a Few Feisty Grandchildren International Communication Association Annual Meeting May 27-31, 2004, New Orleans, LA. 19

Lee Grieveson, Discipline and Publish: The Birth of Cinematology Cinema Journal 49:1 (Fall 2009): 168-175. Katharine Harmon, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004). Joanne Hershfield & Anna McCarthy, Media Practice: Notes Toward a Critical Production Studies Cinema Journal 36:3 (Spring 1997): 108-112. Edgar Huang, Teaching Button-Pushing versus Teaching Thinking: The State of New Media Education in US Universities Convergence 15:2 (2009): 233-247. Henry Jenkins, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century [white paper] Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning (MacArthur Foundation, 2006). Klaus Bruhn Jensen, The Humanities in Media and Communication Research In Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Ed., A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies (New York: Routledge, 2002): 16-39. 20

Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Media Reception In Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Ed., A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies (New York: Routledge, 2002): 156-170. Douglas Kellner, Media Communications vs. Cultural Studies: Overcoming the Divide Communication Theory 5:2 (1995): 162-177. Shearon A. Lowery and Melvin L. DeFleur, Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effects, 3rd Ed. (White Plains, Longman, 1995). Robert McChesney, Critical Communication Research at the Crossroads Journal of Communication 43:4 (Autumn 1993): 98+ William Merrin, Media Studies 2.0: Upgrading and Open-Sourcing the Discipline Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture 1:1 (2009): 17-34. Graham Murdock, Media, Culture and Modern Times: Social Science Investigations In Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Ed., A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies (New York: Routledge, 2002): 40-57.

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Gerald OGrady, The Preparation of Teachers of Media, Journal of Aesthetic Education 3:3 Special Issue: Film, New Media, and Aesthetic Education (July 1969): 113-134.
John Durham Peters, Genealogical Notes on The Field Journal of Communication 43:4 (Autumn 1993): 132-. Grace Roosevelt, The Triumph of the Market and the Decline of Liberal Education: Implications for Civic Life Teachers College Record (2006): http://www.tcrecord.org/ Gregory Shepherd, Building a Discipline of Communication Journal of Communication 43:3 (Summer 1993): 83+ Pamela J. Shoemaker, Communication in Crisis: Theory, Curricula, and Power Journal of Communication 43:4 (Autumn 1993) William David Sloan, Makers of the Media Mind: Journalism Educators and Their Ideas (Lawrence Earlbaum, 1990).

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William Uricchio, Historicizing Media in Transition In David Thorburn & Henry Jenkins, Eds., Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 23-38.

Virginia Wright Wexman, Media Studies and the Academy: A Tangled Tale Cinema Journal 49:1 (Fall 2009): 140-146.
Kevin Williams, Understanding Media Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

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Daniel K. Wallingford, A New Yorkers Idea of the United States of America, 1939 24

Saul Steinberg, View of the World from 9th Avenue, 1976

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Nina Katchadourian, Austria, 1997

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Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy, and Jackson Stevens, ca. 1979-90, 1999

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Guy Debord, Naked City, 1957; Constant Nieuwenhuys, Symbolische voorstelling van New Babylon, 1969 28

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Carte du Tendre

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How Do We Map Media Studies?

Liberal Education Tradition Social Sciences Humanities Design Education

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Liberal Education
Diderots Systme figur des connaissances humaines, Encyclopdie, 1751

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Rafael, School of Athens, 1509-10

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there is a kind of education in which parents should have their sons trained not because it is necessary, or because it is useful, but because it is liberal and something good in itself To aim at utility everywhere is utterly unbecoming to high-minded and liberal spirits
-Plato, Politics, Book VIII

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Aristotle and His Pupil, Alexander from L. Figuier

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Laurentius de Voltolina, Liber ethicorum des Henricus de Alemannia, Einzelblatt, 14th c.

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From Herrad von Landsberg, Hortus deliciarum, 12th c. 39

I. Soyockina / V. Gracov, Immanuel Kant, Lecturing to Russian Officers, n.d.

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Friedrich Georg Weitsch, Portrait of Alexander von Humboldt, 1806

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Social Science
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Mass Society Criticism: 1920s-50s:

Mass media are a negative and disruptive force in society and should be controlled Mass media have the power to directly influence the attitudes and behavior of ordinary people People are vulnerable to the power of mass media b/c they have become isolated and alienated from traditional social institutions Social changes brought about by disruptive influence of mass media will result in advent of more authoritarian and centrally controlled societies

Mass media bring about decline in cultural standards and values (Williams 29)
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Magic Bullet Theory as a point of departure informed by Darwinian models, which portrayed media audiences as irrational creatures guided more of less uniformly by their instincts
(Lowery & DeFleur 13)

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Landmark Effects Studies

Payne Fund Studies Radio Panics: War of the Worlds

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Landmark Effects Studies

Peoples Choice: Media in a Political Campaign Audiences for Daytime Radio Serials: Uses & Gratifications Experiments with Film Persuading the American Soldier in WWII: Frank Capras Why We Fight

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Landmark Effects Studies

Persuasion: The Search for Magic Keys (Yale Program of Research on Communication and Attitude Change)

Personal Influence: 2-Step Flow (Katz & Lazarsfeld)

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Landmark Effects Studies

Project Revere: Leaflets as a Medium of Last Resort

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Landmark Effects Studies

Television in the Lives of our Children (Wilbur Schramm) Agenda-Setting (McCombs & Shaw)

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Landmark Effects Studies

Violence and Media

First 50 years of research contributed to : demise of Magic Bullet Theory; Uses and Gratifications Theory; Agenda Setting Theory; Adoption of Innovation Theory; 2-Step Flow and Diffusion of Info; Limited Effects; Modeling Theory (people act out patterns of behavior these depictions serve as imitable models); Social Expectations Theory (can learn norms, roles and other components of social organization from media); Cultivation Theory (e.g., heavy viewers see world as more violent) (Lowery & DeFleur)

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Michael Delli Carpini, Dean, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania: growth of mass media, fear of their propagandizing effects, concern about the stability of democracy, emergence of new techniques for studying social phenomena draws on traditions from humanities (e.g., rhetoric), social science (e.g., political science and anthropology), sciences (e.g., information technology, cybernetics, psychology) and professions (e.g., law, policy, journalism)

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Ron Rice, UCSB: concerns about propaganda from WWI and WWII; rise of audience research with introduction of radio; influx of European sociologists and social psychologists after WWII; growth of urban studies and concern over transformation of communities and rise of mass society; rise of grad education w/ GI bill; influx of immigrants

Barbie Zelizer, Penn: post WWII, development of social science research councils, gravitation toward funded research on media effects, increasingly present role of media as new actor in public sphere

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[T]he standard history had, or at least was subsequently endowed with, a practical political purpose. It attempted to negate or at least deflect the characteristic critiques of modern, liberal, capitalistic democracies (Carey, in Munson, 18)

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John Durham Peterss List of Media Studies Forefathers/mothers:

Dewey, Walter Lippmann, George Herbert Mead, Lewis Mumford, Kenneth Burke, Margaret Mead, Robert Park, Harold Lasswell, Floyd Allport, Robert Lynd, Edward Bernays, Robert Merton, Lazarsfeld, I.A. Richards, F.R. and Q.D. Leavis, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Rudolf Arnheim, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal, Antonio Gramsci
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Hopefully, the range of forefathers and foremothers will grow as inquiry is freed to take the best ideas from anywhere, regardless of provenance.
(Peters 138)

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Humanities
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shift from medium-specific histories films history in particular to media history Films own history and developmental trajectory, and its assumed agency with regard to derivative media such as television, have been recast in the light of an array of precedent technologies, practices, and notions of mediation
(Uricchio 23)

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Design Education
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Drawing Media Studies Borders

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Douglas Kellner: The boundaries of the field of communications have been unclear from the beginnings. Somewhere between the liberal arts/humanities and the social sciences, communications exists in a contested space where advocates of different methods and positions have attempted to define the field and police intruders and trespassers. Despite several decades of attempts to define and institutionalize the field of communications, there seems to be no general agreement concerning its subject-matter, method, or institutional home. In different universities, communications is sometimes placed in humanities departments, sometimes in the social sciences, and generally in schools of communications..
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 But the boundaries of the various departments within schools of communications are drawn differently, with the study of mass-mediated communications and culture, sometimes housed in Departments of Communication, Radio/Television/Film, Speech Communication, Theatre Arts, or Journalism departments. Many of these departments combine study of mass-mediated communication and culture with courses in production, thus further bifurcating the field between academic study and professional training, between theory and practice
(Kellner 1995).

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Meyrowitz (1994): no common understanding of what the subject matter of the field is (qtd Williams 4) Golding and Murdock (1978): embracing a staggering and often unbounded range of interests and topics (qtd Williams 4) Levy and Gurevitch (1994): impression of a field that is everywhere and nowhere (qtd Williams 4)

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Rather than lament that communication isnt one of the six social sciences, we should regard it as a newer, nascent way of organizing inquiry (Peters 132) we cannot succeed in academia by imitating the established fields. We have to boldly strike out in a popular and interdisciplinary manner that runs directly counter to the dominant trends in the academy (McChesney 100)
Move from 3Rs reading (input, decoding), riting (output, encoding), rithmetic (computation or processing) rooted in postwar pedagogical models, to 4Cs: cognition, culture, control, communication (Beniger 23)

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disciplines are defined not by cores of knowledge (i.e., epistemologies) but by views of Being (i.e., ontologies)
(Shepherd 83)

it is precisely the nature and purpose of disciplines and their disciples to forward a unique view of Being among all the alternatives and say, There is something primary, or essential, about this particular view. Disciplines depend on disciples acting as advocates for the ontology they forward, making implicit and explicit arguments that their view matters. (Shepherd 84)

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Via Julia Lupton: http://bit.ly/ifguWJ

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Our fields are defined less and less by the professional passport we bear than by the literatures we read, teach, and contribute to (Peters 133)

and by what we make.

Fields are defined through their practice.

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Henry Jenkins:

New media literacies include the traditional literacy that evolved with print culture as well as the newer forms of literacy within mass and digital media. [We] must expand [our] required competencies, not push aside old skills to make room for the new. Beyond core literacy, students need research skills. Students also need to develop technical skills. Yet, to reduce the new media literacies to technical skills would be a mistake on the order of confusing penmanship with composition.
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As media literacy advocates have claimed during the past several decades, students must also acquire a basic understanding of the ways media representations structure our perceptions of the world; the economic and cultural contexts within which mass media is produced and circulated; the motives and goals that shape the media they consume; and alternative practices that operate outside the commercial mainstream (Jenkins 19-20)

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If we continue to view making and analyzing as mutually exclusive categories, then our students will never receive the full benefits of what media studies as a field of practices and knowledges has to offer.
(Hershfield & McCarthy 112)

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Beyond Training Flexibility must be a valued characteristic of communication workers, and generating flexibility requires a different sort of education than that needed to train somebody to fill a slot. The need for increased critical thinking skills cannot be underestimated. It is the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information that will allow communicators to train themselves to take on future jobs. We must give our students a general communication education with a large conceptually based core of classes. There will still be a place for classes that give students technical skills, but these must be subordinate to classes that teach critical thinking, law, history, mass media and society, international communication, and so on.
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Gerald OGrady, Founder of Media Study @ Buffalo:

Media studies = the exploration of the creation, the aesthetics, and the psychological, social, and environmental impact of the art forms of photography, cinematography, videography, radio, recordings, and tapes within the broad framework of general education in the humanities

Media studies = the new humanities

(OGrady 116-7)

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IDEO Founder,David Kelly, K-12 Education Experience, reprinted in Fast Company, 1 February 2009 85

Charles Eames, from 1969 What Is Design? exhibition

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Students are equipped to ask whether they want to / ought to / refuse to enter into / challenge / reject (the) existing art & design world / industry / academic / market
(Bailey)

Students have the capacity to change the discipline itself.

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John Culkin:

Media studies represents the arts and humanities in a new key.

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