Does 'the media' have a future?

Couldry, Nick ORCID: 0000-0001-8233-3287 (2009) Does 'the media' have a future? European Journal of Communication, 24 (4). pp. 437-449. ISSN 0267-3231

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Abstract

Media-related practices have so long been configured in a particular one-to-many pattern that the mass communication paradigm has seemed automatic as both frame for research and fact of social life. The paradigm is summed up in the English term ‘ the media’. But what if the very idea of ‘the media’ is also imploding, as the interfaces we call media are transformed? Does the implosion of ‘the media’ generate a crisis of appearances for government and other institutions? Three dynamics are considered here — technological, social and political — that are potentially undermining our idea of ‘the media’ as a privileged site for accessing a common world. The article concludes that, instead of collapsing, the social construction of ‘the media’ will become a site of intensified struggle for competing forces: market-based fragmentation vs continued pressures of centralization that draw on new media-related myths and rituals.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://ejc.sagepub.com
Additional Information:	© 2009 The Author
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Date Deposited:	10 Sep 2013 10:30
Last Modified:	21 Feb 2025 18:25
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/52402

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