Media studies

The modern world is permeated by mediated sound. The technologies of sound recording, amplification, and transmission have transformed public and private life and the spaces we inhabit. Our sense perceptions - the ways we see and hear and otherwise experience the world around us - have been mediatised. Mediated words and music constitute identities and channel desires, knowledges, relationships, and politics. Media provide records of the past and populate our visions of the future. Listening is an important key to the experience of and engagement with media, and the ways in which we can engage with each other through media. This chapter explores the many ways listening features in media scholarship despite the tendency of the field to take listening for granted. The chapter will be published in The Handbook of Listening, a major new volume of contributions by leading scholars across a wide range of disciplines.