Re-reading Media, Re-thinking Culture
A workshop was jointly organised by USIEF Mumbai
and the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences on June 12, 2009.

This workshop provided an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings and practical uses of media and cultural studies. As opposed to the mass communications approach to the media, which tends to focus on media effects and messages, these approaches enable the development of a critical perspective on media, culture and society. In contemporary society, media and culture are crucial sites where identities are produced and popular ways of seeing are consumed. Cultural Studies enables us to meaningfully engage and interact with these new modes of being and doing. By making us conscious of the many complex ways in which power impinges on our lives and constructs our cultures, it has the potential of empowering us to critically read the media and other cultural institutions and texts, to understand how they shape our identities and to think about how we could possibly shape them. Using exercises, media artefacts and interactive methods, this workshop aimed at giving participants some basic insights into how media and cultural studies could change the ways in which we look at our mediated culture.