A welcome note to our new blog, from Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser, Head of LSE’s Department of Media and Communications, and Professor Myria Georgiou, the Department’s Research Director.
Welcome to the Media@LSE blog! We are excited to be launching this public space for engagement and exchange with academic, policy and public actors. Media@LSE is a new public-facing initiative from the LSE’s Department of Media and Communications that reflects our commitment to critical, empirical and engaged research into the vital role of media and communications within contemporary societies. The blog incorporates the Media Policy Project (MPP) blog, which finds a new home here to continue policy-oriented research discussions. Media@LSE also has close ties to the Department’s other two blogs: Polis and Parenting for a Digital Future, and will integrate findings from projects such as Our Data Bodies and Media and Migration, as a way to optimise the accessibility of our research as a whole.
Thus, Media@LSE builds on the Department of Media and Communications’ existing public engagement but also expands it, opening up new opportunities for us as researchers to share and reflect on our evidence-based research, and to tackle issues that arise around media, communications and public life. At the same time, the blog welcomes other participants who want to contribute to debates and exchange ideas about this research agenda with members of the public and expert communities.
Contributions and conversations on the Media@LSE platform address critical questions at the intersection of inequalities and justice, representation and identity, and voice and violence in an unevenly media-saturated world. These are organised within four main inter-connected themes: Media Culture and Identities; Media Participation and Politics; Communication Histories and Futures; Communication, Technology, Rights and Justice. In this blog we hope to widely share research around these themes, especially as these reflect our commitment to de-Westernising scholarship and to undertaking comparative and transnational research.
Further activities
We are also launching a new newsletter to let our colleagues and friends around the globe know more about the exciting research that is being conducted at Media@LSE. Our aim here is to capture developments across the research themes, and by profiling the work of our department (including that of fellows, visitors and PhD candidates), to provide insight into the range and depth of our research expertise and impact to a wider audience.
As part of our Media@LSE identity, we are firmly grounding our research in a global world, but also in our city, London. For example, in 2019-20 we are launching the Media@LSE London project, bringing together LSE academics and students to engage with the city, its media cultures, industries, and politics through a series of projects and engagement activities. We hope to work with new audiences such as schools or civil society institutions, to showcase research in innovative ways through film, exhibitions and digital projects; and to develop seed projects that will lead to further public engagement and knowledge exchange.
We will also plan events throughout the year, through our Research Dialogues and public lectures, that speak to the broader themes of Media@LSE. We will publicise the events here and on our department website, you can find out more about contributing to the blog here, and do connect with us on Twitter to follow our latest updates.