Defining a media anthropology presents a series of difficulties involved with the objects of study. If we as a context only the means of communication, perhaps we are in a generalized way of understanding the transmission of knowledge or information.
On the other hand, the media are built on a strong foundation supported by marketing and advertising, with the ability to create new trends and fashions, including new cultures (subcultures) that produce large changes in the forms of social behavior, with the ability to generate a transversal which is fed from different sources of knowledge. Similarly, the study of media is confronting different disciplines that are interwoven in a complex way between communication sciences, computer engineering and telematics, social sciences, fine arts, business studies political science.
Well it is a process of interdisciplinary study with a strong dose of creativity, where it is necessary to place each of the actors in their specific role, thus opening an overview of the different ideas able to build the concept of average. Some good ingredients for a delicious roast.
A fragment of an article I read years ago when I began to study anthropology.
“Suppose that we were not studying in broadcasting transmissions and society in America in the mid-twentieth century, but the opera and society in Italy in mid-nineteenth century. After all, the opera was in Italy during that period, a mass communication medium. What would we be studying?”
Uses of Mass Communication by the Individual, in W.Ph. Davison/F.T.C. Yu, Mass Communication Research, Praeger Publisher, New York, 1974.
