MA Media Studies

Media studies examines the history, technology, aesthetics and theory of media. It inquires into the interactions between media and culture, society, politics and economy. Its subject matter ranges from the earliest forms of image, writing, and numbers to letterpress, photography, film, television, radio, music, and sound to digital media networks and computer code. Media studies examines the dynamics of these developments up to our digital present. It analyzes the use of media and the material character of analog and digital media and asks about the medial conditions and possibilities of our thinking, perceiving and acting. In accordance with this research orientation, the master's program is divided into four modules that make up the courses:

Theoretical perspectives

This module deals with theories, models of thought and systems of thought with regard to media, medial processes and structures. In addition to media theories in the narrower sense, other forms of representation that deal specifically with media, the concept of media, or the question of medial communication can also be dealt with. Case studies and current research questions are used to discuss the scope and explanatory power of media-theoretical and -historiographical figures of thought, arguments and explanatory patterns. The focus is on both the analysis of the systematics and history of theory and on the application of theory and the development of theoretical questions.

Cultural Techniques

This module is devoted to the interplay of practices, materialities, and media involved in the making of culture. The module focuses on questions about the inscriptions and forms of circulation, transmissions, translations, and displacements by which cultural knowledge is generated and transmitted. Students develop systematic and historical perspectives on the media-technical course of cultural processes, which is always initiated and controlled by basic practices such as descriptions, calculations, measurements or codings. On the basis of current research questions, the aim is to understand and master the active forces and mechanisms that contribute to the nurturing and unfolding of culture.

Research oriented study

The focus of this module is guided, independent research within the framework of a research seminar. Students gain insights into the planning and implementation of larger research projects and are thus introduced to the methods and techniques of advanced scientific work. The goal is the competence to independently do research, conduct research and present the results in an appropriate form. It is as much about the critical analysis of machine code as it is about questions of the socio-cultural effects of media techniques.

Strategies of the digital

This module offers an in-depth investigation of the logics and effects of digitality and digitization on the production, distribution, circulation, perception, reception and transmission of data, information and knowledge. Contemporary practices of the digital are distributed and reflected upon by recourse to concrete media-historical and media-archaeological forms and constellations. Contrary to what is often assumed, the digital has not only become effective since its electronic processing, but can be traced back to symbolic practices of transferring the analog world of materials and things into codes that can be read and processed by humans or machines. Differentiating, coding, transmitting, combining, regulating, and controlling can thus be understood as the fundamental strategies of the digital, which need to be analyzed in terms of continuities, breaks, shifts, and mutations.

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