Recent trends in media theories research around the world

The study aims to monitor recent trends in media theory research, and due to the wide scope of the study, the researcher relied on the method of selecting the sample as a basic pillar for conducting the study. Instead of choosing a number of specialized periodicals within a specific time frame, because the scope of the research is expanded outside the boundaries of specialization; This is due to the nature of media science as an interdisciplinary science that increasingly intersects with other human and social sciences. It is considered possible to study media as a field with specific frameworks or closed in on itself.
A timeframe was defined for the sample from 01/01/2015 to 31/5/2019; This is for a number of reasons, the most important of which is that the year 2015 was the year of political changes that announced the beginning of a global shift that included a revolution in the form of media, its political uses and social effects. The United States of America) as we arrived after a moment when the media work and independent media became a fragile target for politicization and attack from leaders of democratic countries.

The sample consisted of two parts: an indirect sample and included all the studies and research that were published in the time range of the study sample, in order to choose the second part of the sample, which is the direct part of the sample.
The qualitative analysis method was applied to the direct sample. By subjecting each study to qualitative critical analysis in order to extract cognitive additions and determine his contributions to modern trends of media theories research.
 The researcher also relied, in conducting the study and its practical framework for the analysis, on three hypotheses that represented the main axes of the study:

-        Firstly, the continuing theoretical pattern of the influence of the media in the dominance of the field of academic media research, despite the passage of major transformations due to the growth of digital media, and the relationship between media use and economic and political action in the world.
-       Second, the disappearance of basic concepts from the components of media theories as we know them, to be replaced by other concepts more appropriate to the rapid changes in the media environment towards digital, such as the network perception of media processes (technological determinism); Mediation and normative concepts.
-       Third: The awakening of the critical trend in the research of media theories, which dealt with the academic field of media with criticism, analysis and review
The study reached a number of results that can be summarized as follows:
That despite the digital explosion that refuses to stop since the beginning of the millennium and is developing at a speed that is difficult to pursue academically, and despite the sharp political changes that the whole world is witnessing, we are not going to lose the traditional theoretical pattern of media influences in the academic field for two reasons summarizing the researcher's future vision for the development of academic knowledge In the studies of media theories:
-       First: Despite the age of most theories of the effects of media, which extends over several decades and starts from the middle of the last century, they are theories in development, re-imagining themselves in the new digital environment and adding new theoretical concepts that allow a relative understanding of developments in the media and political scene, such as the retina and mediation. The researcher expects that the trend of retina and dynamism will continue to change what we know about theories of influence without completely losing those theories.
-       Second: The digital media environment is also developing, and we have not yet reached any stability in the relationship of digital media with traditional media and personal communication. In addition, the structural factors shaping the political and economic context of the media work have not yet fully taken control of the scene, which opens the way for many opportunities to build on the emerging critical trends that seek to link the studies of media theories with the context of media work.
 The researcher expects more growth in the direction of critical studies, as it is related to the continuous transformation of the contextual relationship with the media, and the relationship of the two to subjectivity and the various societal forms that result from it. However, the growing awareness of the importance of studying macro-level systems will not mean that we lose influence theories as well, as while the context reproduces itself to govern control over digital media, this means that the same media influences that existed within the traditional media framework are not on the way to disappear as before. Some advocates of freedom to obtain and produce knowledge, information and media content. Our understanding of the agenda-setting effect may change to become more complex and take the grid shape, but the effect itself has not disappeared, even if its path is complicated. We might have hoped that the development of digital media would contribute to the disappearance of the gates and with them the guards, but despite the change in the shape of the gates and the transformation in their methods of work, and despite the development of our understanding of the principle of guarding, the gates did not disappear, nor did the guards disappear. The theory remains what the effect remains.