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I see there’s some rage about media studies again. Shouting about how useless it is, comparing it to being an electrician or a plumber. As someone with a City & Guilds in Plumbing & Heating (qualified in 1991) & a PhD in Media Studies (awarded 2019) I have some skin in the game.
Plumbing is of immense value. There is an immediate and tangible benefit to it. Boiler broken? Pipe burst? Drain blocked? Call the plumber, they come and fix it and charge accordingly. They have a skill – intellectual and practical - that many lack. For this, they charge a fee
It’s immediately beneficial and we would be lost without them. I was a plumber, not a great one, I hated it but was young and foolish, but I recognise its value and sometimes think I ought to have stuck with it. But I didn’t, I quit.
I went to university as a mature student. I loved it, found it inspiring and life-changing. Both plumbing and Media Studies have immense value to society.
Academic study of the media dates back more than 80 years. There's a wealth of scholarship on the sociological, psychological, cultural & economic dimensions of the media. Newspapers have been around for more than 250 years, the cinema for more than 100 & TV for more than 60.
Media literally ‘mediates’ culture, news media places boundaries & limitations on what constitutes ‘acceptable’ ideological & political discourse. To paraphrase McCombs and Shaw:
“Media cannot tell us what to think (the oft repeated and wrong ‘brainwashing’ thesis) …but it is remarkably successful at telling us what to think about.”
In other words, it shapes (and limits) the discourse. The idea that we should not recognise, and interrogate these ideas is absurd. It is not possible to disconnect the study of media from the study of power.
For students at a university like mine, most students are attracted to media studies because they want to intellectually examine their place within systems of representation & relations of power. These systems have often not reflected (or even denied) their own experiences.
So yeah, plumbing is great & invaluable, we could not do without it, but that value does not reduce the value of studying the power imbalances of our highly mediatised world, and our place within it. (thread ends)
Late addition: point is, it’s not a zero sum game, it’s possible to value both plumbing (& other trades/skills) AND Media Studies. Plumbing = immediately, tangibly beneficial;
Media Studies = more long term benefits of media literacy, critique of ways in which power in reproduced
Media Studies = more long term benefits of media literacy, critique of ways in which power in reproduced
