The Four Cultures: Media Studies at the Crossroads

Abstract

The commentary traces four distinct but overlapping cultures in US media studies: (1) speech and rhetoric, (2) a media research field centered on the mass communication trades, (3) one detached from those trades, and (4) film studies. I point to each culture’s institutional history, typical academic unit, and unique self-understanding. The main claim is that the four-part division has always had an arbitrary character, but is especially incoherent and damaging in an era of media convergence and cross-disciplinary interest in the field’s core questions. The commentary argues that the four-culture divide renders our scholarship invisible not just to outsiders from other disciplines but even to our would-be compatriots in the other three cultures.