📖 ENCYCLOPEDIA · TOPIC

Media & Communication · Encyclopedia

Media and communication studies are the academic disciplines centred on the study of mass media, interpersonal and group communication, journalism practice, public relations, advertising, broadcasting, film, digital and social media, and the broader information-and-attention economy. The field has its origins in the early-20th-century studies of propaganda and mass communication (Lasswell, Lippmann, Lazarsfeld) and has expanded through the cultural-studies tradition (the Frankfurt School, the Birmingham CCCS, Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams), the political-economy-of-media tradition (Herbert Schiller, Robert McChesney, Ben Bagdikian), and the post-1990s digital-media-and-internet research that became increasingly central as media consumption migrated online. The discipline divides into the more theoretical-and-research orientation (typically housed in arts-and-sciences faculties as Communication, Media Studies, or Cultural Studies departments) and the more professional-orientation (typically housed in dedicated Schools of Journalism, Schools of Communication, or Schools of Cinema-and-Media-Arts).\n\nThe global media-and-communication school landscape has distinctive structural variation. In the US: the Annenberg School at USC (the largest communications school globally by some measures), the Annenberg School at Penn, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism (the principal US journalism school by reputation, with the Pulitzer Prize administration), Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the University of Texas at Austin Moody College of Communication, the Greenlee School at Iowa State, plus dedicated film-and-TV schools at USC (the Cinematic Arts School), UCLA, NYU Tisch, Columbia, Cal Arts. In the UK: Goldsmiths Department of Media and Communications, the LSE Department of Media and Communications, the Cardiff School of Journalism (one of the principal UK journalism schools), Westminster, the University of Leeds. In Continental Europe: the Communication Science programs at the University of Amsterdam, KU Leuven, the Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI Lugano), the Sciences Po Paris journalism program. In Asia: the Communications University of China; the Singapore Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at NTU; the Asian College of Journalism Chennai; the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC, the principal Indian journalism school, with campuses in Delhi, Aizawl, Amravati, Dhenkanal, Jammu, Kottayam); the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication; the Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad (MICA, the leading Indian advertising-and-strategic-communications school).\n\nIndia's media-and-communication academic infrastructure includes the IIMC system, MICA Ahmedabad, Symbiosis SIMC Pune, the Asian College of Journalism Chennai, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences School of Media and Cultural Studies, the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society Bangalore, the Centre for Internet and Society Bangalore, plus the substantial growth of private-university media programs (Ashoka University Media Studies, Krea, Jindal School of Journalism and Communication). India's media-industry context is one of the world's most economically substantial — the Indian newspaper market is among the world's largest by absolute circulation; the Hindi-and-regional-language broadcast television market has 200+ million households; the streaming-video market post-Reliance Jio is the world's second-largest by subscriber count; Bollywood plus the Tamil-Telugu-Malayalam-Kannada-Bengali film industries collectively produce ~1,500-2,000 feature films annually.\n\nMajor subdisciplines: mass communication theory and research; journalism studies (the academic study of journalism, distinct from journalism practice); media history; political communication; international and global communication; cultural studies and media-and-cultural-studies; rhetorical studies; interpersonal communication; organisational communication; health communication; risk communication; science communication; environmental communication; advertising and strategic communications; public relations and corporate communications; broadcasting studies (radio, TV); film and screen studies (the analytical wing of cinema studies); media production (the practice-oriented wing — film, TV, podcast, video, photography); journalism practice (reporting, editing, multimedia, data journalism, investigative journalism); digital and social media studies (the rapidly-growing post-2005 field); media industries studies (the political-economy-of-media tradition); media psychology; audience studies; cultural-and-creative-industries policy; the rapidly-growing AI-and-media research community studying generative-AI effects on media.\n\nFor a globally-mobile professional, the journalism-and-communication pathway has multiple structural variants. The MA Journalism / MS in Journalism is the principal professional-graduate credential. The BA in Communication Studies / Media Studies is a common undergraduate pathway. The PhD in Communication / Media Studies prepares research-faculty. Career destinations span news media (newspapers, magazines, TV and radio broadcasting, digital-native publications, podcast networks, the substantial freelance-journalism economy), the strategic-communications industry (Edelman, Weber Shandwick, BCW, FleishmanHillard, the major PR agencies), advertising agencies (the WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, Interpublic, Dentsu networks), broadcast and streaming production houses, in-house communications and PR roles at major corporates and governments, multilateral-institution communication functions, NGO-and-civil-society communication roles, and the rapidly-growing creator-economy and content-marketing industry.