Industrial Approaches to Media: A Methodological Gateway to Industry Studies

Industrial Approaches to Media: A Methodological Gateway to Industry Studies

From Samuel Ward, PhD Candidate (aaxsjw@nottingham.ac.uk)

We are pleased to announce a range of new content on our website.  This is free to access and includes videos of the workshops from our recent inaugural event:

Paul Grainge and Catherine Johnson, of the University of Nottingham’s Institute for Screen Industries Research (ISIR), give a practical guide to interviewing media professionals – how to get them, do them and use them.

Steve Benford, Professor in Computer Science, talks about his experience as a Dream Fellow at BBC Research and Development and reflects on how creative and academic professionals can meaningfully engage with each other.

Steve Presence (University of the West of England) draws on his experiences of working with both activist filmmakers and commercial production companies to consider the ethics and politics of industry engagement.

Elizabeth Evans (University of Nottingham) gives a crash course in the ethical issues at stake when doing research for media companies.

We also have the director of ISIR, Gianluca Sergi give his ABC of Working with Industry, and a new blog by PhD student Elinor Groom on the place of archives in media industry studies.

On this sunny afternoon, that is truly a summer feast of advice, discussion and ideas from scholars with extensive first-hand experience of engaging with the media industries! The above joins existing contributions from Henry Jenkins, Michele Hilmes, and Amanda Lotz. Watch out for more useful resources later in the year.

IAM is aimed at postgraduate and early career researchers interested in engaging with media industry professionals and companies to produce collaborative research. The resource gathers blogs and interviews with scholars exploring methodological perspectives on the value and challenges of doing media industry studies and forming industry-academia collaborations. We are looking for postgraduates to contribute blogs or videos to the site as the project expands over the next year. Anyone interested should contact Matthew Freeman at aaxmaf@nottingham.ac.uk.

IAM Project Team: Ash Harkin, Leora Hadas, Matthew Freeman and Sam Ward

Sam Ward
PhD Candidate
Department of Culture, Film and Media
School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies
University of Nottingham