27 Nordicom Review, Supplement, 33 (2012) 1, pp. 27-34 Doing the Right Thing Media and Communication Studies in a Mediatized World Stig Hjarvard “Doing the right thing?” was the general theme – and question – of the NordMedia 2011 conference in Iceland and it provided an interesting opportunity for the research community to call for thorough self-relection about the present status of the ield and the future development of media and communication studies. The ield of media and communication studies in the Nordic countries has not only been growing quantitatively in terms of numbers of university study programs, researchers, and published articles (Koivisto and Thomas, 2008; Nordenstreng, 2011), but also has expanded in a quali- tative sense: the ield has matured through theoretical, historical, and methodological contributions and has broadened its scope and embraced the whole palette of new media and communication phenomena in almost all spheres of society. Today, media and com- munication studies deal with everything from early documentary ilm to geo-tagging in mobile media, from political campaigning to web-based learning. The story of media and communication studies must no doubt be labeled a success story: within a limited number of decades, the ield has managed to develop from a small and fragmented research area with almost no institutional foundation to a major research discipline with a solid institutional basis in most universities. This is not merely due to our own efforts and excellence, I hasten to say. A combination of the growing importance of media in society and the buzz and glamour of the media industry and technologies has en- larged media and communication departments’ symbolic capital and in many cases made them extremely attractive in the eyes of students and thereby ensured a steady growth in departments’ economic funding in an increasingly market-driven higher education sys- tem. Media is no longer a fringe subject in universities, but has become a key research and teaching discipline often providing an economic surplus that allows universities to provide subsidies to older and less successful subject areas with declining student interest. In other words, we have moved from the periphery to the center of academia. So our response to the question posed by the conference theme from an institutional point of view certainly could be answered in the afirmative: Yes, we are doing the right thing! However, I will not go further down the road of self-acclamatory speech on beh- alf of our research ield, but rather engage in a less festive, yet important discussion of emerging problems in our ield. I will focus on two developments concerning the ield of media and communication studies that so far have supported each other, but increasingly may come into conlict with one another: the institutionalization of the ield of media Round Table on noRdic Media ReseaRch