media studies

Examples of media studies in the following topics:

• Documents

  • Typically, sociological research on documents falls under the cross-disciplinary purview of media studies, which encompasses all research dealing with television, books, magazines, pamphlets, or any other human-recorded data.
  • Regardless of the specific media being studied, they are referred to as texts.
  • Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass communication, communication, communication sciences, and communication studies.
  • Content analysis refers to the study of recorded human communications, such as paintings, written texts, and photos.
  • It falls under the category of unobtrusive research, which can be defined as ways for studying human behavior without affecting it in the process.

• Gatekeeping

  • Outside of media organizations, individuals can also act as gatekeepers, deciding what information to include in an email or in a blog, for example.
  • As an academic theory, it is found in several fields, including communication studies, journalism, political science, and sociology.
  • Originally focused on the mass media with its few-to-masses dynamic, theories of gatekeeping also now include the workings of face-to-face communication and the many-to-many dynamic now easily available via the Internet.
  • Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication that may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.

• Sociology and Other Social Sciences

  • The social sciences comprise the application of scientific methods to the study of the human aspects of the world.
  • Psychology studies the human mind and micro-level (or individual) behavior; sociology examines human society; political science studies the governing of groups and countries; communication studies the flow of discourse via various media; economics concerns itself with the production and allocation of wealth in society; and social work is the application of social scientific knowledge in society.
  • Social sciences diverge from the humanities in that many in the social sciences emphasize the scientific method or other rigorous standards of evidence in the study of humanity.
  • In ancient philosophy, there was no difference between the liberal arts of mathematics and the study of history, poetry or politics.
  • Thus, Aristotle studied planetary motion and poetry with the same methods; Plato mixed geometrical proofs with his demonstration on the state of intrinsic knowledge.

• Socialization and Human Sexuality

  • ., from society), especially from religion, law, and the media.
  • The media is one final example of a cultural program through which individuals encounter normative discourses of sexuality.
  • Pornography presents another way in which individuals are socialized towards particular sexual practices through the media.
  • Follow-up studies show that many of these individuals—in addition to female pornography viewers—attempt to incorporate the actions they witness in pornography into their own sex lives.
  • Examine the various ways in which a person is sexually socialized, specifically through religion, law, and the media

• Education and Industrialization

  • Among these are computers in the classroom, a website for every class, class blogs and wikis, wireless classroom microphones, online media, and interactive whiteboards.
  • Recent studies on child labor and poverty have suggested, however, that when poor families reach a certain economic threshold where families are able to provide for their basic needs, parents return their children to school.
  • Education economics is the study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education.
  • Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.
  • Among these are computers in the classroom; a website for every class; class blogs and wikis; wireless classroom microphones; and online media and interactive whiteboards.

• Mass Media and Technology

  • The term media comes from Latin meaning, "middle," suggesting that the media's function is to connect people.
  • Media bias refers the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media.
  • This approach theoretically allows diverse views to appear in the media.
  • The apparent bias of media is not always specifically political in nature.
  • The news media tend to appeal to a specific audience.

• Material Culture

  • Material culture is also a term used by historians, sometimes termed "material history," which refers to the study of ancient objects and artifacts in order to understand how a particular culture was organized and functioned over time.
  • Anthropologists thus distinguish between material culture and symbolic culture, not only because each reflects different kinds of human activity, but also because they constitute different kinds of data and require different methodologies to study.

• High and Low Culture

  • Popular culture studies is the academic discipline studying popular culture from a critical theory perspective.
  • It is generally considered as a combination of communication studies and cultural studies.
  • Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society.
  • Conceptual barriers between so-called high and low culture have broken down, accompanying an explosion in scholarly interest in popular culture, which encompasses such diverse media as comic books, television, and the Internet.

• Nature vs. Nurture: A False Debate

  • But today, the concept of nurture has expanded to refer to any environmental factor - which may arise from prenatal, parental, extended family, or peer experiences, or even from media, marketing, and socioeconomic status.
  • For example, researchers have long studied twins to determine the influence of biology on personality traits.
  • These studies have revealed that twins, raised separately, still share many common personality traits, lending credibility to the nature side of the debate.
  • Because of their identical genetic makeup, twins are used in many studies to assess the nature versus nurture debate.

• Propaganda and the Mass Media

  • Mass media can be employed to manipulate populations to further the power elite's agenda.
  • Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in mass media.
  • These two models—the propaganda and the "power elite" conceptualization—evidence how mass media can be used to reinforce the powerful's positions of power and interests.
  • During the Gulf War (1990), the media's failure to report on Saddam Hussein's peace offers guided the public to look more favorably on the U.S. government's actions.
  • Evaluate the impact of mass media as propaganda, particularly in terms of the "power elite"