The Battle of San Jacinto – Henry Arthur McArdle (1895)

From William Merrin, via David Gauntlett:

The discussion of digital media is happening everywhere today – among the public, commentators, the media, the government and within nearly every other academic discipline… [Media Studies] has the potential to be one of the most important subject areas going into the 21st century, at the forefront of debates around digital technologies and their remaking of the world.

That’s exactly why I find it so interesting.

But more interesting to me today is the realisation that there is nothing inevitable about Media Studies as the locus for these debates:

The discussion of digital media is happening everywhere today – …. [e]verywhere, that is, except in media studies where it remains an optional interest and where the broadcast mindset and conceptual categories prevail. But the broadcast model and its audiences are the past of the discipline and so too are many of its major approaches.

The discipline, therefore, faces a choice. It has the potential to be one of the most important subject areas going into the 21st century, at the forefront of debates around digital technologies and their remaking of the world. But equally it has the possibility of being left behind, its focus on reception and content and broadcast forms and concepts condemning it to an increasing irrelevance for everyone but itself. Media studies has no necessary right to lead debates on media: it has to fight to prove it understands it better and has the most effective critical tools to train and guide its students and the public in the future.

More to follow. Clearly there is more to learn about the position of Media Studies vis-a-vis other subjects. To me that leadership position had seemed natural – but I can see now that when a subject matter becomes so pervasive, it may be broken up for parts by existing disciplines.