A Word from the Subject Editor: Modern media and cultural studies – new strategies, methods and research areas

Abstract

Contemporary Media Cultural Studies – New Strategies, Methods, and Research Fields

Media cultural studies require a continual redefinition of both their research domains and the very methods, strategies, and objectives of inquiry. The object of study is no longer limited to specific text-producing practices or the analysis of existing media interfaces, services, and products, but also encompasses their users, creators, and designers. A crucial aspect, particularly in the context of actual reception and prosumer practices, concerns emerging cultural, digital, and media competencies, which contemporary literature frequently designates as future competences or key competencies.

This shift in research perspective toward media users primarily stems from the characteristics of new media and communicative practices observed in social media, as well as phenomena embedded within cultures of participation, convergence, and remixing. The analysis of contemporary cultural practices also necessitates attention to forms of genuine interactivity and latent interpassivity, along with attributes of VR, AR, MR, and AI-related technologies. Equally significant are media-cultural activities employing neural networks, algorithms, and deep learning mechanisms.

However, such redefinition must not imply a continual and uncontrolled expansion of these phenomena—i.e., of research fields, methods, and strategies—as this would risk eroding the discipline’s identity. Conversely, the dynamic development of cyberculture, digital humanities, and research dedicated to techno-corporeal hybrids, bio-technological transfigurations within art, culture, literature, medicine, education, as well as within so-called creative industries and performative art, demands ongoing reflection and sustained inquiry into postmedia, biomedial, and transmedia phenomena. Within this analytical domain, a deepened consideration of the ethical, aesthetic, and political contexts of media usage, as well as the research perspectives offered by posthumanism and transhumanism, is also required.

Contemporary research in media cultural studies further encompasses analyses addressing: the status of media cultural studies as a trans-, sub-, and inter-discipline; new methodological approaches within media cultural scholarship; the role of media cultural studies in relation to artistic, literary, and educational projects that utilize new media, technologies, AI, and artificial neural networks; the discipline’s engagement with contemporary challenges, including the production of socially relevant knowledge; and new directions in the evolution of contemporary media cultural studies.

The authors of the contributions compiled in this monographic volume have addressed selected aspects of these issues in their theoretical studies and research. Many of the questions posed herein remain open, which—one hopes—will encourage subsequent researchers to pursue the investigative and theoretical problems introduced in this publication.

/Agnieszka Ogonowska/