Media Studies research overview
Academic research into media and communications requires attention to the texts, artefacts, technologies and platforms that allow meaning to be made, and also to the consequences for social and cultural life, and political-economic organization, of pervasive media activity and processes of mediatisation. Research at the Centre for Media Studies blends these broad approaches in its engagements with the political, social and expressive significance of digital media; with cinema, media institutions and popular culture in contemporary societies and in historical relief; and with the nature of public discourse and political processes in transnationally networked societies.
Our work combines a strong record of research monographs with interdisciplinary collaborations, involving other departments in Maynooth University, particularly colleagues in English, Sociology, Computer Science, Anthropology and History, and within such international professional associations as the European Communications Research and Education Association (ECREA), the International Association for Media and Communications Research (IAMCR), Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS), Modern Language Association (MLA) International Association for the Study of Irish Literature (IASIL) and the Electronic Literature Association (ELO).
The ubiquity and deep integration of digital media technologies into everyday life - and the range of questions this poses as to the interrelations between media developments and socio-cultural processes and arrangements – is a key theme in our research. Current projects, which draw heavily on Marxist and feminist theory, focus on the political economy of digital media, particularly the ‘consumer Web’ and the organization of labour in digital media industries. This strand also examines the social uses of digital media, and what this means for such analytical approaches as discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. This emphasis on production and social organisation is complemented by the critical analysis of existing and emerging digital culture artefacts, the impact of digital technologies on human creative expression, and the affordances and constraints of the digital medium as they relate to the changing form of poetic expression from analogue to digital.
The history and cultural significance of media and cinematic institutions, practices and artefacts constitutes a rich vein of research in the Centre. Current and recent research projects range across the study of film and media - primarily television and film but also extending to video, advertisements, and internet channels - in the context of cultural politics and political economy. The central themes are the study of popular and middlebrow culture in Ireland and the historical development of popular cultural forms, including popular press, television, and film; the history of commodity culture in Ireland, including shopping and tourism studies; cinema as a social practice and technological mass culture; and migrant media production and institutional responses to communications in ‘migration societies’.
Digital Media
Notable thematic publications include Kylie Jarrett’s recent Google and the Culture of Search (2013, with Hillis, K & Petit, M.), which examines the consequences of our increased reliance on search technologies not only for the production of knowledge but also of ourselves. Jeneen Naji’s chapter entitled Poetic Machines: From Paper to Pixel in Internet Research, Theory, and Practice: Perspectives from Ireland (Fowley et al., 2013) investigates digital methods of signification in order to examine the impact of the digital medium on poetic expression. Postgraduate research in relation to this theme includes Patrick Boyle’s doctoral thesis on the car as a mediating and mediated technology, and Paula Campbell’s M.Litt dissertation, involving empirical research on journalistic practices and news production in the ‘digital newsroom’ of financially pressured regional newspapers.
Irish Cinema
The Centre has an excellent record of scholarship on Irish cinema and Ireland in cinema, in global perspective. Professor Maria Pramaggiore’s studies of Neil Jordan (2008) and Irish and African American Cinema (2007) will soon be complemented by a new book on Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon: Time, Transnational Cinema, and the History of the Image, which examines the thematics of British colonialism for an Irish protagonist, but also discusses the economic and political issues relation to the production in Ireland in the 1970s. Denis Condon’s (2008) Early Irish Cinema 1895-1921 explores the extent to which cinema fostered a new way of looking in and at Ireland. Stephanie Rains’ (2007) The Irish American in Popular Culture 1945-2000 integrated the study of cinema into a wider consideration of the ways in which the Irish American diaspora relates to aspects of Ireland and Irish Culture in the formation of their cultural identity.
Media Production
Other publications engage with questions of media production and cultural consumption. Maria Pramaggiore’s Vocal Projections: The Voice in Documentary transcends the treatment of the voice from a primarily rhetorical standpoint to examine the materiality of the voice in documentary film and media. Gavan Titley’s Broadcasting in the New Ireland (2010) and edited volume National Conversations? Public Service Media and Cultural Diversity in Europe (2014) examine migrant media production and institutional attempts to represent and mediate contemporary migration societies.
Cultural Production and Consumption
These contemporary studies are complemented by an emphasis on histories of cultural production and consumption. Stephanie Rains’ (2010) Commodity Culture and Social Class in Dublin 1850-1916 charts the growth of modern consumer culture and changing conceptions of consumption as a social and political practice. Deirdre Quinn’s (2012) PhD thesis mapped the cultural representation and institutional production of ‘vexatious bodies’ in twentieth century Ireland, particularly in relation to the gradual decline in the influence of the Catholic Church. Eleanor O’Leary’s doctoral dissertation examines the development of youth cultural spaces in 1950s Ireland, challenging the predominant and often reductive stereotypes of Irish life during that decade.
Media and Politics
The contested impact of networked media on politics and public culture comprises a third significant strand of our research. Gavan Titley’s The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (2011, with Alana Lentin) examines the transnational construction and translation of ‘crisis racism’, and his current book project, Media and Racism, examines the mediatization of racism in the conjunction of ‘post-racial’ politics and hybrid media processes. Zoë O’Reilly’s recent PhD thesis (supervised with the Dept. of Geography) involved conducting a participative photography project with asylum-seekers living in direct provision, and tracking the affective and political life of the images. Veronica Malone’s ongoing doctoral research examines the networking of political and media actors on environmental controversies under different historical media regimes.