Television studies

Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. Usually, it is distinguished from mass communication research, which tends to approach the topic from a social sciences perspective. Defining the field is problematic; some institutions and syllabuses do not distinguish it from media studies or classify it as a subfield of popular culture studies.

One form of television studies is roughly equivalent to the longer-standing discipline of film studies in that it is often concerned with textual analysis yet other approaches center more on the social functions of television.^[1] For example, analyses of quality television, such as Cathy Come Home and Twin Peaks, have attracted the interests of researchers for their cinematic qualities. However, television studies can also incorporate the study of television viewing and how audiences make meaning from texts, which is commonly known as audience theory or reception theory.