At the Department of Media Studies and Journalism (Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University) we have four main missions:
- We educate future journalists and media team leaders. As part of our bachelor's degree program, we focus on journalism. Our goal is to prepare our students for journalistic work in newspapers, television, radio or online media - and at the same time to understand the media and their profession well and understand the responsibilities associated with their future profession. In the follow-up Master's program, in the specialization Media Industries and Production, we prepare our students for work in leading positions in media organizations and production and project teams.
- We educate future media analysts and media research scientists. In the follow-up Master's program, we have opened the Media Research and Analyst specialization, whose graduates will be fully prepared to work in analytical departments of Czech and foreign media, in research agencies, as well as in academic research. Scientific work in primary research is then conducted by students of our doctoral program Media and Journalism Studies, who are an integral part of our research teams and projects.
- We conduct internationally visible research. Research teams working at the department deal with a wide range of topics - research of users of online technologies, media audiences, trust in media, and current changes in the journalistic profession, analysis of the content of Czech and foreign media, and study of the history of Czech media. Our research has been and is supported by a number of domestic and international research grants - and our work can be often find in leading professional journals as well as in the books published by top world publishers.
- We cultivate public space. We honor the duty to share the results of our pedagogical and scientific work - we cooperate in educating journalists and the public, we share and popularize the results of our research, and we participate in expert evaluation of Czech media.
The Department was established in 1998, following the establishment of the Faculty of Social Studies. History of media studies at Masaryk University, however, dates back to the First Republic of Czechoslovakia in 1920s-1930s. At the time, two important figures of Czech sociology worked at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University: Arnošt Inocenc Bláha and Emanuel Chalupný stood at the birth of the scientific reflection of media. Regular program in journalism and media studies at the second largest university in the Czech Republic then began in the mid-1990s.