I am super-pleased to say that I have finished writing my next book, Making Media Studies: The Creativity Turn in Media and Communications Studies, and delivered it to the publisher, Peter Lang. Hurray!
I normally have the blurb of a book written well before the book is done – indeed, it helps to frame and understand the book, if one has a good blurb.
In this case, though, I didn’t. So last week my publisher and I wrote one, and then we tinkered with it by listening to people’s reactions on Twitter, and so we ended up with this final one.
Here it is:
In Making Media Studies, David Gauntlett turns media and communications studies on its head. He proposes a vision of media studies based around doing and making – not about the acquisition of skills, as such, but an experience of building knowledge and understanding through creative hands-on engagement with all kinds of media.
Gauntlett suggests that media studies scholars have failed to recognise the significance of everyday creativity – the vital drive of people to make, exchange, and learn together, supported by online networks. He argues that we should think about media in terms of conversations, inspirations, and making things happen.
Media studies can be about genuine social change, if we recognise the significance of everyday creativity, work to transform our tools, and learn to use them wisely.
Making Media Studies is a lively, readable and heartfelt manifesto from the author of the acclaimed Making is Connecting.
The book will be published by Peter Lang, New York, in spring 2015. Elsewhere on this blog you can read extracts from the introduction and a bit about ‘What kinds of knowledge do we need now?’.
Cello-making photograph by Flickr user CelloPics (see original), used under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 licence.
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