Media Studies

The Wits Department of Media Studies is one of the pre-eminent centres for the critical study of media and culture in the southern hemisphere. Our work touches a wide variety of fields, including economics, sociology, anthropology, geography, visual culture, international relations, popular culture and literature and is unified by a shared concern with the diverse influences of media and communications on lived experience, culture and society in the global south. We are dedicated to exploring how media are used from above and below in contexts of decoloniality. Our research challenges the hegemony of the global north and breaks new ground in the study of the global south. Although rooted in critical debates shaping research in South Africa and Africa, our research and teaching engages with global flows of knowledge while critically building upon established canons of media theory.