MIT Graduate Program in Comparative Media Studies

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.

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.

Video: Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner, “Seeing Silicon Valley”May 6, 2022
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: Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of SpeechApril 15, 2022
Martha Minow presents what’s needed if the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press continues to hold meaning in the twenty-first century.
Video: Oscar Winberg, “Archie Bunker Goes to Washington: How Television in the 1970s Remade Politics into Entertainment”April 11, 2022
Recognizing the popularity of television, politicians learned how to use (and abuse) television entertainment to win votes, to fundraise, to promote their agenda, and to push for legislation.
Video: Jens Pohlmann, “Platform Regulation and the Digital Public Sphere: Comparing the Discourse in Germany and the United States”April 1, 2022
Drawing on computational methods, Jens Pohlmann analyzes the discussion about a German anti-hate speech law called the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) and the debate about a reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Video: Racquel Gates, “Reintroducing Melvin Van Peebles”March 18, 2022
How to present new insights on Van Peebles, building on existing familiarity with the filmmaker and his work while avoiding cliches and hagiography.
Video: Katherine Jewell, “Party City: WMBR, Institutional Change, and Democratic Media”March 11, 2022
Katherine Jewell delves into the history of WMBR at MIT from the 1960s to the 1980s to explore how this station, with a license held by an independent non-profit corporation, built a meaningful community institution despite transformations within the university, its student body and organizations, as well as regulatory changes regarding noncommercial radio and the music industry’s shifting business model.