Our Mission

Rationale
From 1917 to 1990, universities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe defined the role of the media in courses such as the History of the Communist Party and Marxist/Leninist philosophy, but did not encourage the development of journalism as an independent discipline as had occurred in the West. The ideological basis of communist persuasion provided a model in which the media served the state. The media were subject to censorship or punishment if they did not play a positive role in educating society on the benefits of socialism. When providing coverage of events, the media's role was to present the "objective" truth according to a Marxist interpretation of reality.

Therefore, media theory within academic institutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was primarily defined by the media's role in serving the state apparatus and not as a separate social, cultural or anthropological phenomenon. Some academics say the basic tools of media literacy as they are known in North America were evident in courses related to Soviet film theory, cybernetics and semiotics. But the thorough application of empirical research methods with regard to media never developed in the region as it did in the United States after World War I.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the widespread proliferation of the Internet at that time, academics from the political theory departments of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, sociologists and journalists started becoming acquainted with the Western traditions of media theory. Scholars from Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Hungary were among the first from the region to receive exposure to Western traditions, achievements and the current state of media studies research due to opportunities to travel abroad and pursue their work at Western universities.

Although there is a distinct difference among North American, British. Continental and Soviet/post-Soviet media studies research models, academic programs of mass communication and media studies originated in the United States. For this reason, our project aims to introduce faculty participants to a blend of media theory traditions and provide them with the tools of media literacy so that media studies academics from the region develop a substantive common ground, as well as a common vocabulary, that is understandable by their Western counterparts and their colleagues in the East.

The program will assist junior faculty participants in their teaching by providing them with new tools for training students to become more savvy consumers of the media. By expanding their base of knowledge to allow for new avenues of investigation, participants will no longer be confined to strictly Eastern European research traditions.

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