Cultural studies at the department include research on verbal, musical and visual culture and communication. As far as the studies into verbal communication are concerned, our research include not only text analysis, but also social and technological context of media communication.
Philosophy of language and text analysis
The internationally renowned mathematical linguistic projects of the BME Media Lab (MOKK) have layed the ground for this stream. Current research activities include literary analyses, studies in the philosophy of language and legislative text processing. Another project (in cooperation with the National Library of Hungary) deals with the methods of cataloging and publication of namespaces and dataspaces.
Social and technological context of cultural and creative industries
Through research in this area we look at how cultural phenomena are shaped, and how they change, through their relation to technological and social aspects. This includes several aspects of the social embeddedness of the cultural and creative industries. First, we explore the concepts and strategies behind the production of cultural products such as films, music, works of literature or news. Second, we look at trends outlined by distribution and consumption patterns. This research focuses on two main directions and themes, namely the social and technological context of media and journalism, and the social and technological context of popular music.
In our department research in visual communication is primarily based on the methodology of analytic philosophy. Our investigations include studying the perceptual and cognitive aspects of visual communication; applying and extending the theory of picture acts to photographic and architectural communication; researching the visual communicative phenomena of cities and architecture; and also studying the reception, interpretation, and evaluation of artistic and non-artistic photographs. Theoretical investigations in visual communication are also accompanied by photographic (fine art photography) and curatorial practice.