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.
Please note we are not currently accepting applications.
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.
Conference: Bearing Witness, Seeking Justice
October 5-7, 2022, join a forum for diverse constituencies to express their views and to showcase findings on videography as a creative tool in the quest for social justice.
Featured
Video: “Seeing Silicon Valley”
Acclaimed photographer Mary Beth Meehan and Silicon Valley historian and media scholar Fred Turner discuss their recently published and award-winning book Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America.
Video: Katherine Jewell, “Party City: WMBR, Institutional Change, and Democratic Media”
The history of WMBR at MIT from the 1960s to the 1980s, exploring how this station, with a license held by an independent non-profit corporation, built a meaningful community institution despite transformations within the university.
