@article{wpcc 237, author = {Paddy Scannell}, title = {The Academic Study of Media Has Always Been the Study of New Media}, volume = {12}, year = {2017}, url = {https://www.westminsterpapers.org/article/id/237/}, issue = {1}, doi = {10.16997/wpcc.237}, abstract = {<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Has amnesia been a consistent aspect of media studies? This talk argues this may be so drawing upon the insight of Peters and Kleis Nielson (2013: 257) that new media are things we don’t know what to do with and ‘media we do not know how to talk about’. A sense of crisis always accomponies this sense of the newness of the media. Key moments have shaped this history: the sociology of mass communication (associated with Columbia University, NY); the moment of Media Studies and Cultural Studies 1 (associated with the UK and the Universities of Birmingham and Westminster) and Media Studies 2 (connected to Web 2.0) dating from the beginning of the millenium. At each of these moments (new) media embodied both promise and danger as an object of study against a backdrop of global crisis.</span></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1">This contribution asks whether media studies has been trapped by a ‘presentism’ that fails to engage with earlier traditions of commumication theory and should undertake some unforgetting.</span></p></div></div></div>}, month = {1}, pages = {5-6}, keywords = {amnesia,history,communication studies,New media}, issn = {1744-6716}, publisher={University of Westminster Press}, journal = {Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture} }