The New Revisionism in Mass Communication Research: A Reappraisal

The major developments of mass communication research, particularly in Britain, during the last fifteen years are reviewed critically. A new revisionist movement has emerged that challenges the dominant radical paradigms of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This has taken the form of contesting the underlying models of society, the characterization of media organizations, the representations of media content, the conception of the audience and the aesthetic judgements that underpinned much `critical' research. The author argues that this revisionism is in part a reversion to certain discredited conventional wisdoms of the past, a revivalism masquerading as new and innovatory thought. However, part of the new critique can be seen as a reformulation that could potentially strengthen the radical tradition of communications research.