Anthropology of media
Scientific study of the creation of mass communications and its workers
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- 3 chapters
Related on Lably
Through Mass media, Consumption (economics) and Globalization
Methodology
The use of qualitative methods, particularly ethnography, distinguishes media anthropology from other disciplinary approaches to mass media. Within media studies, media ethnographies have been of increasing interest since the 1980s. However, as Stephen Putnam Hughes remarks in a recent review, these studies often do not engage in rigorous ethnographic fieldwork, ignoring or misapplying such landmark anthropological techniques as participant observation or long-term fieldwork. Given such differences, anthropologists who take an interest in the media see themselves as forming a distinct subfield from ethnographic approaches to media studies and cultural studies.
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Theory
The anthropology of media is a fairly inter-disciplinary area, with a wide range of other influences. The theories used in the anthropology of media range from practice approaches, associated with theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, as well as discussions of the appropriation and adaptation of new technologies and practices. Theoretical approaches have also been adopted from visual anthropology and from film theory, as well as from studies of ritual and performance studies (e.g. dance and theatre), studies of consumption, audience reception in media studies, new media and network theories, theories of globalisation, theories of international civil society, and discussions on participatory communications and governance in development studies.
Ethnographic contexts
The types of ethnographic contexts explored in the anthropology of media range from contexts of media production (e.g., ethnographies of newsrooms in newspapers, journalists in the field, film production) to contexts of media reception, following audiences in their everyday responses to media such as newspaper cartoons (Khanduri 2014). Other types include cyber anthropology, a relatively new area of internet research, as well as ethnographies of other areas of research which happen to involve media, such as development work, social movements, human rights or health education. This is in addition to many classic ethnographic contexts, where media such as radio, the press, new media and television (Mankekar 1999, Abu-Lughod 2005) have started to make their presences felt since the early 1990s.