What is Media Studies? What is Film Studies?
Media Studies is, at its most straightforward, the study of the media. However, this obviously provides little indication about what might entail. Essentially, Media Studies revolves around understanding different forms of media (film, television, magazines, video games, world wide web) in terms of what they say, how they say it.
What makes Media Studies somewhat unique is that this understanding is brought about not just by traditional theoretical means but also through producing media content as students themselves.
Film Studies, as its title suggests, focuses on one specific medium and in doing so allows for further insights into different contexts- historic, economic and social factors behind films are all considered.
What makes Media Studies somewhat unique is that this understanding is brought about not just by traditional theoretical means but also through producing media content as students themselves.
Film Studies, as its title suggests, focuses on one specific medium and in doing so allows for further insights into different contexts- historic, economic and social factors behind films are all considered.
Why do Media/Film Studies?
While few other subjects seem to need to justify themselves as being important, Media Studies is often met with a strong sense of skepticism. It is, as a new subject, continuing to find its identity, especially because of the huge changes that are occurring to the Media with the increasingly large role that the world wide web plays in our lives. Below is a brief excerpt from a group of Media academics who are themselves trying to work out exactly what the priorities are of a media education.
In terms of a vocational view of media education, the last Labour Government in the UK seemed to take the view that a key reason for recruiting students onto media courses was to develop a generation capable of leading the world’s creative industries in order to grow GDP.
By contrast, David Buckingham and others argue that we study the media and teach people how to make it because it plays an increasingly significant role in our lives and our ability to ‘read’ and ‘write’ media texts is vital to a civic society. Indeed, the sheer amount of time young people spend with the media is itself often offered as a key reason for studying it.
A common view of education is that it doesn’t do us any good unless it hurts; many young people, far from looking back on their school days as ‘the best days of our lives’ remember a time of rote learning and failure. It is still all too common to hear that their educational experiences are far from positive; but media courses for many students do offer pleasure and enjoyment of learning, and we would argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with that!
-Manifesto for Media Education (www.manifestoformediaeducation.co.uk)
In short, paragraph 1 indicates that it could very well help you get a job, paragraph 2 suggests it is important as it seems naive to not study something which has, does and will continue to play such an important role in our lives and finally paragraph 3 says that students really enjoy the independent learning aspect of the course. I would agree that all three of these are very good reasons to take all of the subjects involved.
About This Site
This site has been designed for Media and Film Studies students for each of the courses. There are links for information for each but the most frequently updated page of this website will be the blog. Please direct any questions or problems to [email protected].