Media studies, in Mitchell and Hansen's "Introduction", is a messy combination of multidisciplinary forays into the topic of media and mediation and a "failure to communicate across borders that divide the technophiles, the aesthetes, and the sociopolitical theorists" (xvi). In response to what they see as an all-encompassing field with seemingly ironic communication issues, they chose to include multiple perspectives in each of their three topics - aesthetics, technology, and society. Their hope for "doing media studies" is to be critical and open to the variety of information created by the multidisciplinary field of media studies.
Their definition of media is an "intervening substance", which makes media "content, not just a vehicle or channel". Their description of media on page ix, which includes the statement that "Shakespeare had no concept of media, but his plays may be profitably studied as specific syntheses of varied technical, architectural,, and literary practices", seems to describe media as a combination of form, genre, conventions, and physical manifestation.
Not to be overly dramatic, but I really felt that the stakes of media studies for Hansen and Mitchell were described when discussion Grusin, Kittler, and Bolter. Their statement, "what is lost in the process is a broader sense of the existential stakes, of how these operations of mediation tie in with the form of life that is the human", seems really bold. To say that it's an existential question that will help us understand what it is to be human is a powerful statement.
What matters for them in doing media studies? What do they hope we will attend to in doing media studies?
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