Media and Politics Research Strategies in a Crossdisciplinary Field TORE

As we enter the new millenium, the media research communities in the Nordic countries can look back on the first decades of attempts to bridge the gap between the social sciences and the humanities within the media field. A process of integration and cooperation has been started between scientists in the Nordic universities, and the emergence of a crossdisciplinary field has been reported to be successfully on its way in some departments and less so in others (eg. Weibull in Carlsson and Lindblad 1992). It could be said to be already accomplished, at least if the prime indication of crossdisciplinarity was that of peaceful coexistence between researchers from different disciplines and fields under the same roof. For instance in Norway, initiatives were taken both in Oslo and Bergen in the mid 80s to gather researchers from the social sciences and from the humanities in one media and communication department (Slaatta and Saebø 1997). Cross-disciplinarity was intellectually perceived as important , but was first of all an organisational invention: coexistence was thought to be an indispensable necessity for the advancement of an independent field. Through the integration of staff and the development of curriculum and courses which reflected the twin roots of the media problematics, crossdisciplinarity was first of all offered as a discipline to students, fostering a somewhat fragile intellectual identity within the academic field. It is more problematic to assess the degree of accomplishment or success, if crossdisciplinarity also means increasing the common experience in conducting crossdisciplinary research, involving systematic coordination of research interests, cooperation in collection and analysis of data, and development of overarching, methodologies and epistemological bases for inquiry. I will argue, that after a decade or two of coexistence , the situation is both different and yet very much the same. Crossdisciplinarity is a continuing process and struggle and even has some problems of is own: criticism is often heard that media studies is not an academic field in its own right, because it borrows its theoretical models, concepts and methodologies from other disciplines and has no core identity of its own. And instead of concentrating on developing a solid foundation in social theory, the media field is seen as too eagerly connecting itself to the interests of the media industry and the media professions (Slaatta 1999a, see also Corner 1998 on vocationalism in British media studies). Yet, there is undoubtedly a stronger sense of a …