Media theory: purpose and usesA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWhave implicit understandings or ideas with
which they make sense of the media’. Such a
theoretical level is important because of the role
it plays in public debate on the media, though
often leading ‘to simplistic portrayals of the role
and infl uence of the media’. Practioner theory
relates to the ideas which media practitioners
have about their world. It is also referred to as
operational theory, covering ‘the accumulated
practical wisdom found in most organizational
and professional settings’.
Academic theory – the primary focus of
Williams’s book, and indeed of the study of
media from GCSE and A level to degree work
and beyond – is what occupies scholarship,
and as far as media study is concerned, involves
a broad range of academic fi elds, including, as
Williams lists them, sociology, psychology,
social psychology, literary studies, anthropology,
sociolinguistics, economics, political science,
philosophy, history, law, rhetoric and speech
communication, group and systems theory, ‘and
even mathematics’.
In the light of this diversity, says Williams, ‘it
is not surprising that there are confl icts over the
assumptions, foci and methods of analysis in
the fi eld and that contradictory hypotheses and
theories are put forward’. Th is, of course, is part
of the fascination, indeed the open-endedness,
of the study of media. Th eories must be exam-
ined and re-examined, subjected to close and
insistent scrutiny; in other words tested in terms
of relevance and reliability, and it must not be
seen as something ‘detached from the day-to-
day issues of ordinary men and women’.
Th eory ‘guides research by helping scholars
organize how they gather facts and observe
the world. But good theory should also help us
to understand and make sense of our personal
experience and the wider structures and
processes of daily life, and how they shape our
interaction with other people’. For Williams,
the ultimate test of any theory ‘is the extent to
which it furthers our understanding of the world
we live in’. As well as assisting us to develop
our knowledge of mass media, theory helps us
‘challenge the misleading ideas that have come
to dominate public debate about their infl uence
and involvement’.
In terms of subject interest, theory focuses
in the main on the production side of texts,
the texts themselves (see semiology) and the
reception of those texts, all within the cultural,
political, economic, technological and environ-
mental contexts in which communication takes
place. During the early days of media study andMedia Studies Media Studies took its early
dominant form from US-UK perspectives; it
was essentially English language-based, working
along largely Western parameters; and study
of media by and about the rest of the world
either did not exist, or operated in the margins
of course programmes more enthnocentric
than global in scope. In 2000 James Curran
and Myung Jin-Park edited a seminal book,
De-Westernizing Media Studies (Routledge). Its
several contributors argued the case, expressed
in the book’s introduction by Curran, that the
study of media be broadened ‘in a way that takes
account of the experience of countries outside
the Anglo-American orbit’.
In 2009 Routledge published another infl u-
ential work, Internationalizing Media Studies,
edited by Daya Kishan Th ussu. In his introduc-
tory chapter, ‘Why internationalize Media Stud-
ies and how?’, Th ussu writes that ‘meaningful
endeavours at providing comparative models of
media systems have ignored analysis beyond the
Euro-American ambit, despite the extraordinary
expansion of the media, especially in Asia’. Any
meaningful examination of the internationaliza-
tion of media study, states Th ussu, ‘must take
into account the rapid growth of China and India
... which are increasingly making their presence
felt on the global scene’.
Th ussu talks of ‘a moral imperative to interna-
tionalize’, for despite ‘the exponential expansion
in media in the non-Western world, its study in
non-metropolitan centres remains largely insig-
nifi cant, not to say tokenistic’.
▶Katharine Sarikakis, British Media in a Global Era
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2004); Daya Th ussu, Inter-
national Communication: Continuity and Change
(2nd edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2006); Gerard
Goggin and Mark McLelland, eds, International-
izing Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms
(Routledge, 2009).
Media technology See topic guide under
media: technologies.
Media theory: purpose and uses In his
introduction to Understanding Media Theory
(Arnold, 2003), Kevin Williams says that the
purposes of media theory are fourfold: to answer
the question ‘What is going on?’; to explain how
and why; to suggest what might happen next;
and, taking prediction into account, to serve as
a guide to future behaviour and performance. He
identifi es three levels of theory, each of which
interacts with, infl uences and is infl uenced by
the others in the contexts where communication
takes place.
Th ere is commonsense theory in which ‘people