Critical Media Studies Overview

Principles

Definition

Critical media studies is an interdisciplinary academic field and methodological approach that systematically analyzes media forms, institutions, content, production, distribution, and reception to critically examine their role in constructing social reality, power relations, ideologies, and cultural practices. It investigates how media both reflect and shape societal structures, inequalities, and discourses, often employing theoretical frameworks from critical theory, cultural studies, and political economy.

Ontological type

Core Frameworks

Media and Power Relations

Methodological Approaches

Key developments

Key Figures

Framing and Circuit Culture era

James W. Carey[1] was affiliated with Columbia University[2] and Emory University[3] during this era. His key contribution in the era is articulated in the book-length work Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society[4], where he argues that communication constitutes culture and meaning, offering a framework that connects media representations, audience interpretation, and institutional practices to explain how attention and policy discourse are shaped.

Networked Media Literacy era

Henry Jenkins, a central voice in the late 1990s and early 2000s, emphasized participatory culture and media convergence as drivers of how audiences produce, remix, and contest media within digital networks, shaping classroom and activist literacy practices. David Buckingham argued for critical media education that combines enjoyment with critique, focusing on how young people learn to read media texts, understand power, and participate responsibly in public discourse. Sonia Livingstone contributed empirical, cross-national insights into children's digital media use, access, safety, and empowerment, underscoring policy-relevant approaches to global media literacy. Manuel Castells provided a macro-level account of the network society, showing how networked infrastructures enable collective action and new public spheres, which grounded critical media literacy's activist potential in transnational contexts.

Platform and Infrastructure Governance era

In the Platform and Infrastructure Governance era (2005–2023), critical media studies treat platforms, algorithms, and network architectures as political actors that shape visibility, circulation, and the material conditions of collective action. Tarleton Gillespie's Custodians of the Internet analyzes how moderation regimes, design affordances, and governance rules embed power in platform logics that determine what publics can appear and be heard. Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias's data colonialism framework links digital infrastructures and data processes to political economy, sovereignty, and accountability, foregrounding how datafication reconfigures governance. Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism and Safiya Noble's work on algorithmic bias reveal how data-driven platforms reproduce inequalities through governance mechanisms, underscoring questions of accountability and civic resilience.