Recently, as I finish my PhD, I’ve been trying to define my scholarly ambitions. I have many, but I tend to see myself as a media studies scholar who looks at the media through a critical rhetorical lens. I love the media and I love to show how it’s changed. I like to show the communication process and how the audience is participating more than ever before. The cool thing is that the media is participating back.
My background is broadcast news. I’ve always loved watching the news, I love reading the news, I love participating in news. I also love studying what audiences’s share. The future is news aggregators and how the news becomes consumer news and more personal because a person can add various feeds from various Web sites to their Google Reader and other various RSS feeds. We now pick and choose where we want our news to come from–we just don’t have to rely on the evening paper and only one viewpoint–we have multiple voices. But, are there too MANY voices? Like I say, it’s no different than the 17th and 18th century coffeehouses that Samuel Peyps frequented in London to gather all the information to include in his now famous diary, which by the way is a blog. Sometimes we have to go back to the fundamentals of communication to look at where we are now.
Since I have written my dissertation, I found a new love for writing about campaign communications. Technology has changed the way we see candidates. Transforming leaders help form public opinion through new technology be it print, radio, television or the Internet. Candidates are reaching out to citizens in new and innovative ways. Who knew we would find out the vice president choice at the same time the media did because of Twitter and text messages? Instant information is only going to prevail to help form public opinion and play a major key role in campaign 2012. The iPad, iPhone, and other new personal technology will allow us to be connected in trains, planes, and automobiles and probably in submarines!
So, Media Studies scholar is the best definition that I can find for myself. I’ve done the journalism thing in real life, I’ve studied it as a graduate student, I then learned how to rhetorically analyze the media to make sense out of what is happening with new media. I love rhetorical analysis and how it brings forth the changes in the communication process. It’s cool that my job is to look at media with a critical eye so we can all understand the communication process better.
I encourage all scholars to define their scholarly passions and define yourself and never apologize for your true scholarly ambitions.
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