The purpose of the anthropological study of media, writes Prof. Mark Allen Peterson in the journal Social Anthropology, "is to broaden and deepen our understandings of human engagements with media through the application of the anthropological perspective--broadly comparative, holistic in its approach to complexity, ethnographically empirical, aware of historical contingency and relativistic."

Peterson's statement was a contribution to the debate section of the journal, published by the European Association of Social Anthropologists. Entitled, "What Is the Point of media Anthropology?" the commentaries by Peterson and coauthor John Postill argued about what anthropology brings as a relative latecomer to the long-established interdisciplinary field of media studies.

The debate was published in the summer issue of the journal.

Peterson is the author of Anthropology and Mass Communication (2003). Postill is the author of Media and Nation Building (2006). The pair co-edit a new book series on The Anthropology of Media for Berghahn Books.