Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture

We know the discipline, the texts, ideas and arguments but many of our students surpass
us in their knowledge, use and navigation of the contemporary media world’
– William Merrin, Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture

What is the future for Media Studies when students often know more about media than
their lecturers? Is it necessary to upgrade the discipline to Media Studies 2.0, and is
the traditional idea of Media Studies obsolete? Does the revolution in new media really
give power to the people, or does it simply give greater power than ever to those who
would control us?

The inaugural issue of Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture explores these
and other questions relating to the study, teaching and impact of Media Studies and the
media. Examining the case for and against Media Studies 2.0, Interactions includes
articles by William Merrin and David Gauntlett, the chief instigators of the original
debate about the need to upgrade the discipline. Arguing that Media Studies is grounded
in the study of outdated broadcast media, and is increasingly out of touch with
students’ own experiences of media, Merrin highlights ‘the absurdity of being a Media
Studies lecturer when your students know more about media than you do’.

Meanwhile, in their article ‘Straw men or cyborgs?’, Jonathan Dovey and Martin Lister
challenge Merrin’s assumption that current teaching of Media Studies is outdated, while
David Gauntlett’s response to the articles expands on the ideas in his original 2007
piece ‘Media Studies 2.0’ that sparked the whole debate.

Other articles explore further aspects of how new media and technologies have impacted
on Media Studies, from Joke Hermes’ analysis of how Media Studies 2.0 impacts on
Audience Studies to Mark Andrejevic’s examination of the extent to which new
technologies, as much as they appear to democratize the access to, and participation in,
the media, actually serve to maintain current power relations, as users feed ever more
detailed information about themselves to the corporations who hold this data, and thus
collude in their own surveillance.

Join the debate – explore the first issue FREE online:
http://www.atypon-link.com/INT/toc/iscc/1/1

List of contents, issue 1:

·       Editorial

·       Editorial introduction – Optimism, pessimism and the myth of technological
neutrality
- Paul A. Taylor

·       Media Studies 2.0: upgrading and open-sourcing the discipline
- William Merrin

·       Critical Media Studies 2.0: an interactive upgrade
- Mark Andrejevic

·       Beyond mediation: thinking the computer otherwise
- David J. Gunkel

·       Sounds like teen spirit: iTunes U, podcasting and a sonic education
- Tara Brabazon

·       Critical theory 2.0 and im/materiality: the bug in the machinic flows
- Paul A. Taylor

·       Audience Studies 2.0. On the theory, politics and method of qualitative audience research
- Joke Hermes

·       Straw men or cyborgs?
- Jonathan Dovey and Martin Lister

·       Media Studies 2.0: a response
- David Gauntlett

·       Review
- Tero Karppi

Editor: Anthony McNicholas, University of Westminster
Associate Editor:  Tarik Sabry, University of Westminster

ISSN: 1757-2681
Online ISSN: 1757-269X
Published by Intellect, October 2009
Subscriptions: £33 (Personal)/ £180 (Institutional)/ £147 (Online only) (3 issues per year)

More information is available on the following link:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=165/

nicola AT intellectbooks.com

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