Minding the Gap: Reflections on Media Practice

There is an unmistakable gap between intellectual models of mass media
institutions and practices, and the ways that practitioners experience
the media. All too often, media theorists lack personal experiences of
their topics of study, and university departments separate theory and
practice in their internal organisation. This training day – for
postgraduate research students and researchers in the first five years
of an academic career – explored the relationship between media
theories and mass media practices across three thematic workshops.

The contributors were researchers and practitioners concerned with
factual / non-fiction-based mass media that engages with and represents
the ‘real world’ through journalistic and documentary formats, and
whose products are intended for mass or substantial public circulation
– broadcasting, print, photography, film, web, and multimedia. Fields
beyond the scope of the training day included the electronic gaming
industry, PR and marketing, the music industry; also productions
primarily intended for artistic or aesthetic purposes or consumption
within the education sector or minor non-public audiences.

The event included three workshops
– Workshop 1: Media Practice as Methods of Research and Presentation
– Workshop 2: Theoretical Models in Mass Media Practice
– Workshop 3: Double vocations: Mass Media Practice and Theory

and a Keynote Speech by: Professor Brian Winston, University of Lincoln