About Us

Running from November 2009 to January 2016, Antenna was a collectively authored media and cultural studies blog committed to timely yet careful analysis of texts, news, and events from across the popular culture spectrum. The site regularly responded to new works and developments in television, film, music, gaming, digital video, the Internet, print, and the media industries.

Antenna was intended to address a broad public inside and outside the university walls. Within those walls, though, it further intended to bridge the gap between scholarly journals, which remain the paradigm for scholarly discourse but too often lack the ability to reply to issues and events in media with any immediacy, and single-author media scholar blogs, which support swift commentary but are limited in their reliance upon the effort and perspectives of individuals. Coordinated by a group of writers who drew on a variety of approaches and methodologies, Antenna, therefore, existed as a means to analyze media news and texts, both as they happened and from multiple perspectives.

Antenna was operated and edited by graduate students and faculty in the Media and Cultural Studies area of the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. However, content was provided from a mixture of our editors and of a diverse group of writers elsewhere. For a list of many of those who wrote for us, please see the Contributors page.

Antenna’s goal was to create a forum in which readers and contributors participate in active, open, and thoughtful debate about media and culture.

The site was designed to respond quickly to events, with daily posts, or more when events dictate. Because Antenna was interested in timely responses, we encouraged short entries. Extensive presentation of evidence was not required, though supplementary links were encouraged.

Please know that all posts and comments express the opinions of their individual authors, not of the Antenna collective, nor of the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin.

We’re now defunct, though we’ll aim to keep the site up should you wish to read older posts.