Studying Media

Much of what we know about the world, beyond our immediate experience, comes to us through the media. Media studies gives us the tools to respond thoughtfully and critically to media content, and recognise media productions as deliberate constructions rather than windows on reality.

The ‘mediated’ society in which we live, is heavily shaped by the transfer of information. Many of our values, our ideas, and our knowledge of the world come from beyond our individual daily or immediate experience, usually via the media.

They play a vital role in democracy, shaping citizens' understanding of social and political issues and functioning as gatekeepers through which issues, and events must be passed. By studying the media, and understanding the implications of mass communication, we are able to develop an understanding of how things work, how people become informed, and misinformed, and how the myths and ideologies that govern all of our lives are created and sustained.

The media are an important part of our lives for many reasons. Primarily, they help to keep us informed about current affairs, both in the world at large and on the home front. The media are a central part of our lives. Think about how much time we spend being ‘exposed’ to their product’s everyday and how many different ways it can be used. Everyday, we use the media for information and perhaps less willingly, we also accept the media as a source of persuasion, most notably through advertising.

Another way in which media represents an important part of our lives is through the influence and power they hold in society. Although it is not always clear what influence is held or whether it is good or bad, the media are often blamed for many of the problems in today’s society, most commonly with reference to the portrayal of violence. There are a disturbingly large number of cases in which the perpetrator of a violent crime has cited a relationship to the media, and in some cases has admitted to imitating a character or scene from a film.

Though the media are a prevalent part of our lives, we need to recognise that there are other influences that are as strong, or even stronger. Family, education, religion, and peer groups all help to shape our ideas, values, beliefs and behavior. Whilst it is generally accepted that Hollywood films may desensitise children to the consequences of violence, we should be careful when attempting to make correlations between exposure to media violence and imitation as it overstates the power of the image and under-estimates the role of parents.

Finally, to understand the importance of the media in our everyday world, we have to recognise that first and foremost, media companies and organisations exist to make a profit. Films and newspapers are not produced purely to entertain and inform us, they are made because the media corporations know that they will make large amounts of money. In addition to this, complex interrelationships are developing among many major media players to the extent that competitors in one market are often partners in another.

This can be illustrated by the relationships among Telstra, Publishing and Broadcasting Limited and News Corporation Limited, whose core Australian businesses in the past have been telecommunications, television and magazines, and newspapers respectively. While coming from different backgrounds, these three organisations are now partners in the supply of subscription television services to Australia.

Media studies presents us with the opportunity to develop life skills which will enable us to analyse, comprehend, and act in response to increasingly complex media technologies. The idea that the modern mass media are worth critical attention has never been the exclusive property of any one academic tradition. Media studies is a relatively new academic discipline and as such, it draws the ideas and approaches it uses from many different sources.

In schools, media studies is often linked to English or taught by those whose academic training was in English literature.