In an age of ongoing economic and political crisis, military conflict displacing millions of people and systems of governance and democracy in question, a reassessment of the questions posed by the disciplines of media and cultural studies is called for. Traditional paradigms for conceptualising the media are further challenged by shifts in the media environment resulting from the growth of digital and mobile media. This is a defining moment for the field and a time for reflection and

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... ion. The production of academic knowledge and the development of fields of enquiry into the media, culture and society have always been linked to both intellectual formations within the academy and historical events taking place outside it (Scannell 2007). Critical theory and much later cultural studies and media studies were not only a reaction to the pathologies of modern times, but played an active role in naming and identifying them, thus serving as the harbingers of changing times. Conceptual and methodological frameworks used within these disciplines have also changed through time as international scholars attempted to grasp broader shifts in historical, cultural and social processes, showing that the analysis of media in different parts of the world may require different frameworks. This issue of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture arose from an invitation to key international scholars in media and cultural studies to reflect on the present state and the future of their field in the light of recent waves of global crises and new media developments, in ways that transcend facile binaries -between cultural studies and political economy, or new and old media, or global north and south -and to critically engage with the concepts and methods that can help us address the important issues of our time. This issue of WPCC addresses three key thematic questions: A) what are the questions that media and cultural studies should be asking, to respond to a world in crisis? B) How have changes in media technologies altered the questions that media and cultural studies scholars are asking or the methodologies that they have been using? c) How are developments in media/cultural studies research and theorising around the world enriching and challenging the field? Dave Morley opens his talk by questioning the premises of the major questions in media theory. Arguing for better questions, Morley notes the persistence of eurocentricism, mediacentricism and technological determinism in framing the terms of debate and study in media