What is Media and Cultural Studies?
Media and Cultural Studies is a rich and fascinating area of academic study. Culture – social bonds and structures and all forms of creative expression – is interlinked with electronic, print, and digital media. In a global environment in which communications and media play an increasingly central role in all areas of human life, the study of media becomes vital. Media and Cultural Studies programmes examine the complexity of cultural life providing the conceptual tools with which we can understand the production of messages, images, signs and symbols. Topics of study can be diverse: cultural forms such as film, news media, advertising, new and digital media, popular music and television; or more general explorations of how culture shapes identity, gender and race. Methods of study are broad: You might undertake an analysis of, for example, a news report to evaluate differences in the presentation of events. Or you might engage in a theoretical study of a particular media or cultural p
