Resources for Terms and Vocabulary in Media Studies 

Updated and written by Helga Tawil Souri, October 2023

Below you'll find some useful resources for getting through the core course and vocabulary of terms and concepts in media studies.

Books (many of these are available digitally by logging in to NYU library), some of these are explicitly about media studies, others are about social theory/critical theory. 

• Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780190459611.001.0001/acref-9780190459611 

• Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203814284/communication-cultural-media-studies-john-hartley 

• Key Words in Media Studies: https://nyupress.org/9781479859610/keywords-for-media-studies/ 

• The Sage Handbook of Media Studies: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-sage-handbook-of-media-studies/book224694 

• The International Encyclopedia of Communication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781405186407  

• Blackwell Dictionary on Modern Social Thought: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9780470999028  

Websites: 

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://iep.utm.edu/ 

• Online glossary: https://opentextbc.ca/mediastudies101/back-matter/glossary/ (this one is very simple and is just a dictionary of common terms, but doesn't get into the meaning or theoretical approaches) 

Archived websites (no longer updated but still useful): 

• Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory and Postmodern Thought https://web.archive.org/web/20140219152837/http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/itc/postmodern.html