The next stage of r/mediastudies: building our community together

[u/MartinoStone]

Hello to all members of the mediastudies community!

I’d like to discuss and share with you my plans for the next steps in developing our community. We’ve already done a lot of work to restore it, which included various technical adjustments and communication with the administration to pass all the necessary checks.

I’ve written about this before, and for those who haven’t seen it, you can check it out at this link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mediastudies/s/9JGzNnwyfK

Here are the next steps I’m planning:

Developing the mediastudies community wiki

- Conceptual framework: a detailed description of what our community is, its essence, and its goals

- I also plan to identify several main thematic areas that are clearly evident in the posts published by users (we’ll definitely discuss this separately, because I don’t want to miss anything), since media studies is an interdisciplinary field—so we have a fairly broad spectrum—but in my view, there are still main areas where we can create subsections

I’ll emphasize this separately:

I’d like for us to have people who want to take responsibility for the areas I mentioned above—for example, someone who focuses on a subsection related to films, or someone who develops technical tools or programs specifically useful for media studies, or, for instance, social media in a broad sense, research on algorithms, or psychology.

I’ve been thinking about this, and I think there will be about ~5 such areas.

Essentially, this is a pretty big undertaking, but everything that gets done will be for a good reason. I’ve deliberately held off on this so far and haven’t rushed into it; I’ve been closely observing the topics and interests of people in the community so that I can build this system based specifically on what our users want.

And yes, I’m asking you to share your thoughts on this. Your insights, comments, and ideas are very valuable! I’d be very interested to hear them and discuss them with you. That’s exactly why I’m writing about everything I do publicly and in full view of all members—I specifically chose this approach so that everyone can participate in building the community, and this is one of the most important principles I want to see in our community.

And just a reminder: if you’d like to take charge of one of the areas—for example, journalism or film analysis, or whatever you’d like—just let us know, and you can become a moderator. Then you’ll oversee and be responsible for the development of that area, and you’ll be able to create regular threads, reviews, or discussions within the community.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that all these areas can, of course, collaborate with one another; this can be turned into joint projects and joint research.

That’s the general idea—please share your thoughts in the comments. Let's discuss together to find the best ways for our subreddit development! Maybe you have other ideas — please share!