Media and Mass Communication Research Past, Present and Future Reflections from a Nordic Horizon

Research on media and mass communication has been in a state of constant flux for some 50 years. Scholars in the Humanities have traditionally studied the meaning of human expression in language, philosophy, the Arts and literature. Social scientists have focused on the relations between media institutions and other institutions, not least political ones. With the so-called ‘cultural turn’ in the 1980s, media scholars’ interest shifted to the role of media in the development of culture, on the potential of media to generate meaning in a broader sense, and on the adaptation of media messages to culturally dominant forms of understanding. Today, the field is characterized by extreme diversity and extensive specialization. Studies on the systems level are few. At the same time, contemporary multicultural and global societies raise more complex issues than ever before. Given the high degree of specialization, scholars in the field may not be exposed to the impulses needed for them to be able to formulate incisive research problems. For the discipline to produce new insights and new knowledge requires collaboration – within the discipline, but above all collaboration across academic as well as national frontiers.