Victor Blau Memorial Lecture on New Media: "Disruptors, Influencers, Makers: Media Studies at the Crossroads"

Reflecting on a mediascape where surveillance, cross-promotion, and data-mining align neatly with the “big data” and “distant analysis" favored in the digital humanities, Caldwell makes the case for qualitative close analysis of creative labor, media organizations, and economic markets. Qualitative media studies not only raises useful, even unsettling questions about contemporary transmedia industries, but charts a new path for the study of narrative texts, cultural expressions, and visual experience, rejuvenating the aesthetic dimension of arts and humanities scholarship.

John Thornton Caldwell, a media studies scholar and filmmaker, is currently Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA. His numerous books include: Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television  (2008), Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, (2009, co-edited), and New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality, (co-edited, 2003).