ABSTRACT
The eld of media and communication research has emerged over the last half-century at the crossroads of several disciplines and faculties, which themselves had taken shape over a period of 200 years. In 1798, around the time of the formation of the university as a modern research institution (Fallon, 1980; Rudy, 1984), Immanuel Kant had identied a conict among its different faculties, arguing that the humanities (the philosophical faculty), not the theological faculty, should provide the foundations for inquiry into natural as well as cultural aspects of reality within the other faculties (Kant, 1992[1798]). Around 100 years ago, the social sciences gradually detached themselves from the humanities to produce new forms of knowledge about, and more professionals to administer, increasingly complex modern societies. About 50 years ago, an interdisciplinary eld of research began to take shape in response to the greatly increased role, not least, of print and broadcast mass communication in society, drawing on concepts and methods from both the humanities and the social sciences and, to a degree, natural sciences.
