Media Studies (BA)

What is the course about?

Media shape the cultural foundations of our society: They convey sensory perception and generate knowledge, foster memory and remembrance, and shape social relationships and political publics. Media bridge space and time and thus fundamentally organize our relationship to the world.

Cultural studies media research is based on a broad definition of media: In addition to traditional (mass) communication media (books, newspapers, film, radio, television, internet) and symbolic cultural techniques (images, writing, numbers, sound), the immediate effectiveness of media processes is paramount: Media regulate the circulation and storage of signs and things. The subjects of media studies therefore also include means of transport and architecture, measuring instruments and standards, economic and ecological processes, and attention and affect politics.

This focuses not only on technologies and devices, but also on the programs of action and practices, institutions, and power relations associated with them. Media are not merely tools or neutral channels: they transport and transform, connect human and non-human actors, and create the networks and environments in which we perceive and think, live, and act.