Media Culture (1999-2002)

Objectives
The research programme was concerned with the changes sweeping across media culture in Finland and elsewhere and with the impacts of those changes on people's everyday life, especially from a cultural point of view. The aim was to throw light on the Finnish media landscape and its relations at the beginning of the millennium and to produce new information on the role and meaning of media. At the same time the programme also challenged the research community to maintain and develop our cultural memory and to ask how we could constructively influence the ongoing changes in the media world.

Ultimately the aim was to find out how the media world has been shaped into
what it is today.

Themes
The main research themes in this programme were people's everyday media use and its contents. The programme broke down into four closely related theme areas: The first of these, media culture and the individual's competencies, was interested in the relationship between media culture and the individual, in how different forms of communication, different media and contents shape and influence people, their everyday life and environment.

Media, power and community is a theme that raises challenges of a more social and societal nature. With the continuing changes in the communication environment it has been necessary for us to reassess the relationships between the media, democracy, civil society and people's self-control.

Media industries and markets has been concerned with the economic relations that shape our communication environment. Finally, media contents, forms and meanings focus on the meaning of communications products, messages and their forms and contents, in different contexts.

Extent
The programme comprised nine research projects. During its three-year term a total of some 50 researchers were involved from the universities of Helsinki, Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Lapland, Tampere and Turku, the Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, and Åbo Akademi University.

Funding
The Academy of Finland allocated EUR 2,5 million to the programme

Duration
1999-2002

Evaluation
Media Culture Research Programme.pdf

Programme memorandum
Media Culture memorandum 1999.pdf

Coordination
This research programme was coordinated by programme director Päivi Hovi-Wasastjerna, University of Art and Design