ISCC 1 (1) pp. 17–34 © Intellect Ltd 2009 17 Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture Volume 1 Number 1 © 2009 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/iscc.1.1.17/1 Keywords media studies broadcasting post-broadcast era digital media new media education Media Studies 2.0: upgrading and open-sourcing the discipline William Merrin Swansea University Abstract This paper argues that media studies needs to be upgraded to reflect contemporary changes in digital media. It argues that media studies was a product and reflection of the broadcast-era of media, being formed in and analysing a specific historical period of media production, distribution and consumption. The rise of digital media, the transformation of ‘old’ media into a digital form and ongoing developments in digital technology take us into a post-broadcast era, defined by new alignments of productive and distributive power and media consumption and use. This requires an upgraded Media Studies 2.0, marked by the revision and updating of existing disciplinary knowledge; the foregrounding of contemporary changes and the devel- opment of new categories and concepts to understand these, and the open-sourcing of the discipline itself – laying open its foundation, assumptions and biases to enable its public to continually rewrite and improve its knowledge, to ensure its continued relevance in a rapidly changing era. ‘We march backwards into the future …’ Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan and Carson 2003: 387) Responding to his critics, in his 1968 Playboy interview, McLuhan acerbi- cally commented, ‘for all their lamentations, the revolution has already taken place’ (McLuhan and Zingrone 1995: 266). Whether his critics ever grasped that is a moot point but everyone in media studies today faces an equivalent challenge: something is happening and the only important question is do you know what it is? I began to notice it when reflecting upon my son’s world. The only difference between the media world I grew up within and my parents’ child- hood was a few more radio stations and two more TV channels. Wealthier classmates had colour TV and soon after video-recorders too, but we had to wait for prices to drop before either entered our home. This was a world of separate and limited forms: the family telephone, that you didn’t even own, was screwed to the wall and couldn’t take photographs; you couldn’t get radio on your television; films didn’t have special features and no one tried to hack into your television to steal your money or identity. My son, born in 2000, is part of a different world. He has grown up within a fluid, connected, always-on, digital ecology of hybrid intercom- municating forms, messages, content and activities – personalised and individually and immediately available; controllable and manipulable at