The Academic Study of Media Has Always Been the Study of New Media. (30th January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Scannell, Paddy
• Is Part Of: Westminster papers in communication and culture. Volume 12:Number 1(2017)
• Page Start: 5
• Page End: 6
• Publication Date: 2017-01-30
• Subjects: New media -- communication studies -- history -- amnesia; Mass media and culture -- Periodicals; Communication in politics -- Periodicals; 302.23
• DOI: 10.16997/wpcc.237
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-6716

Abstract

Has amnesia been a consistent aspect of media studies? This talk argues this may be so drawing upon the insight of Peters and Kleis Nielson (2013: 257 ) that new media are things we don't know what to do with and 'media we do not know how to talk about'. A sense of crisis always accomponies this sense of the newness of the media. Key moments have shaped this history: the sociology of mass communication (associated with Columbia University, NY); the moment of Media Studies and Cultural Studies 1 (associated with the UK and the Universities of Birmingham and Westminster) and Media Studies 2 (connected to Web 2.0) dating from the beginning of the millenium. At each of these moments (new) media embodied both promise and danger as an object of study against a backdrop of global crisis. This contribution asks whether media studies has been trapped by a 'presentism' that fails to engage with earlier traditions of commumication theory and should undertake some unforgetting.