Media Studies in Germany in the Context of Cultural Studies and Franco-German Cooperation

Abstract

In this article I describe the evolution of German media studies, and I do so with an awareness of the selection, exclusion, and canonization at work in this procedure. I explain the emergence of media studies in Germany from a cultural studies research desideratum. I do this with a concern for the establishment and institutionalization of media studies in Germany within the mainly German-national scientific community as well as German-language cultural studies. I focus primarily on the first two decades of the institutionalization of media studies as an academic discipline, with an attendant concern for the social and intellectual forces at work during that epoch. I then link all of this to more recent turns in media studies, with a concern for its central questions and methodological approaches. I conclude with a note regarding the outlook for German media studies. Though film studies has a certain place in media studies, and many scholars see film studies as the core discipline in media studies, I do not discuss film studies in this article. It deserves an article on its own. Neither do I address some of the crucial progenitors of media studies, including media theories of the 1920s or the relevant writings since Greek antiquity that reflect on textual media and cultural artifacts.