In Comparative Media Studies, we investigate and engage in the world’s complex media environment. We research multiple media forms and technologies, from books, pamphlets, and silent films to social media, virtual reality, and globally-networked games. We study the emerging media practices of states, corporations, social movements, fan communities, and everyday people. Embracing MIT’s motto of mens et manus, we design and create media through practice-based research labs. We examine media within the contexts of varied cultures, societies and social structures, and we critique and design media to empower communities. Above all, we are committed to an ethically and critically engaged approach to the study and production of media.
Research Themes
Our research groups, using a lab model, produce diverse projects. But collectively they work within themes of equity, critical design, and open collaboration.
Video playlist: 2021 CMS Thesis Presentations
Catch up on the incredible work of our ’21 graduate students, from improvisation in music livestreaming to counter-narratives in Appalachia.
Postdoc Opportunity with Prof. Justin Reich and the Teaching Systems Lab
To play a lead role in the analysis of mixed-methods data collected from a cohort of math teachers in an urban school district. Full description.
Latest
Video: Jonathan Sterne, “Diminished Vocalities: On Prostheses and Abilities”
Impairments are usually understood as the physical or biological substrates of culturally produced disabilities, but Jonathan Sterne considers them as a political and theoretical problem in their own right.
Start-up funding news: Faculty and alum secure combined $2.25 million
Professor Ian Condry and CMS alum Han Su recently announced funding rounds for their respective start-ups.
Video, James Wynn: “There’s No Place Like Home: Promotional Narratives, Science Fiction, and the Case for Mars Colonization”
How do you persuade people to leave their indigenous communities to start new ones in a foreign and sometimes hostile place?
