Since we didn’t have a lectorial this week, due to the Labour Day public holiday, I decided to continue on with Brian Morris’s discussion on Media Studies 2.0. So what exactly is Media Studies 2.0? By all accounts Media Studies 2.0 was first used by William Merrin on the blog he created under the same name back in 2007 and in the same year was also used by David Gauntlett (by coincidence) to reference and describe a new way of approaching  and viewing media studies.

The basic premise of Media Studies 2.0 is that the current model of Media Studies 1.0 is outdated. Media Studies 1.0 focuses on the roles of institutions, production, audiences and texts and these simply just don’t exist in the way that they used to. Media Studies 2.0 seeks to draw focus on the ways in which media is changing and to equip students of media studies with a relevant, up-to-date understanding of the CURRENT media landscape thus allowing them to survive and prosper in the new digital world.

As William Merrin stated in his book Media Studies 2.0, “(media studies) has the potential to be one of the most important subject areas going into the 21st century, at the forefront of digital technologies and their remaking of the world. But equally it has the option of being left behind, it’s focus on  reception and content and broadcast forms and concepts condemning it to an increasing irrelevance for everyone but itself”

The key aims of Media Studies 2.0 as outlined by David Gauntlett are:

  • Expert readings of media texts are replaced by everyday readings of media texts, by diverse everyday audience members.
  • Traditional media, classical texts and specific avant-garde texts are replaced by a focus on independent media projects, like those found on: YouTube, mobiles and other DIY media websites.
  • The focus on primarily Western media is removed to embrace international aspects of media studies such as globalisation and diverse; perspectives, creative attitudes and authors.
  • Acknowledgment that the internet has fundamentally changed how  we engage with all forms of media.
  • Rather than teaching students how to ‘read’ media texts, we should recognise their inherent capacity for interpretation, due to their constant exposure to media and associated expository techniques.
  • Traditional research methods are replaced  by methods which recognise individual creativity, and thus remove outdated notions of viewer,  audiences and producers.
  • Acknowledgement that viewers are not just passive/mindless consumers of messages created  by corporations but rather participate in and create individual meanings and viewpoints from the original message supplied.

Catch you later, Louise Alice Wilson