Media Anthropology

What is Media Anthropology?!!

is an area of study within social or cultural anthropology that emphasizes ethnographic studies as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media.

Media, Mass and Anthropology :

A common sense definition for media anthropology would say that it represents the application of instruments (theories, concepts, research methods) from a field of science, cultural anthropology, onto an investigated object, in this case media (i.e. communication mediated by technologies and institutions, be it mass or group, “big” or “small” - Spitulnik, 2002:l79-184). It exactly what suggested one of the first approaches to the field: “We feel that media anthropology is an awareness of the interaction (both real and potential) between the various academic and applied aspects of anthropology and the multitude of media” (Eiselein, Topper, 19761114). This phenomenon is not new, because several sciences can claim the interpretation of the same social system (history of tourism, sociology of tourism, geography of tourism, anthropology of tourism). In this case, besides older actors of mass media research such as sociology, economics, history, law, ethics, and psychology, anthropology as Well can find a place under the sun of mass media, interpreting, with its own tools, the same realities interpreted, in an already legit manner, by its sisters. This point of view is suggested by Coman and Rothenbuhler (2005:l), who believe that “media anthropology grows out of the anthropology of modern societies, on one hand, and the cultural turn in media studies, on the other. It turns its attention from “exotic” to mundane and from “indigenous” to manufactured culture while preserving the methodological and conceptual assets of earlier anthropological tradition. It prepares media studies for more complete engagement with the symbolic construction of reality and the fundamental importance of symbolic structures, myth, and ritual in everyday life.” But in the case of media anthropology things are not simple, firstly because of the ambivalent relationship between the sciences (now) in dialogue: for cultural anthropology. 





         source: 1- "Media Anthropology:An Overview" by Mihai Coman

                         (University of Bucharest, Romania)

                     2- Wikipedia