ABSTRACT
Media studies, as weve seen, emerged as the study of mass communications. Though it nominally claimed a lineage back to Johann Gutenberg's invention of mechanical-type printing, in reality its overwhelming emphasis was upon the major contemporary broadcast forms: newspapers, cinema, radio and television. In the broadcast era this focus was understandable, allowing the discipline to attain a coherent purpose and identity within the academy, but it came at the cost of an epochal separation of these mass media from all earlier media forms. Media studies, therefore, was a historical product and response to a specific model of media production, distribution and consumption that of broadcasting. Although media studies trace the origins of mass communication to Gutenberg, the discipline has shown relatively little interest in the following centuries of print media. Media studies marginalisation of pre-broadcast forms can be seen in its treatment of early visual media.
