Screen Media Practice Research - Dissemination and Review

Dissemination and Review

Screen media practice research is disseminated in a variety of ways: at academic conferences (for example, the Joint Annual Conference of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA), now incorporating the Association of Media Practice Educators (AMPE)); through academic publication; through relationships with cultural and creative industries (such as film festivals, broadcast, online communities, and creative partnerships).

In the UK there was a debate on whether submissions of practice research for peer review needed to be supported by a written statement evidencing the research, or whether the artefact could stand alone as research. According to the AHRC Review of Research Assessment (September 2003), there was need for a clearer articulation of the research process — including research methods, context and significance — in practice-led research that was submitted to the RAE in 2003.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council suggested that "practice-led research" should incorporate a scholarly apparatus that enabled other researchers to assess the value and significance of the results and that completed work should maintain a record or "route map" of the research process. Similarly the Communication, Cultural and Media Studies Panel Report on the UK's Research Assessment Exercise for 2003 valued practice that could give "a reflexive account of itself as research", but found that many practitioners did not explain the ways in which the work constituted original investigation.