PhD Media: Community, Connection and Community through Disintermediated media

The term PhD Media activates action. It is an enabling phrase, concept and trope. As a subset of Media Studies and building relationships with higher education studies, this post-disciplinary article deploys learning-led research to align community, communication and connection. An array of proxies – such as attrition, long candidatures and rescue supervisions – are used to illustrate that ineffective and concerning practices are emerging in doctoral education. Yet each student fears, concerns and failures are individualized. Their problems are atomized. This means that for generation after generation, cohort after cohort, expansive institutional issues emerging in international higher degrees are sliced away from educational structures and land on an individual and their personal responsibilities, feeding the deficit model of teaching and learning. Media hold a role in such a process. Media are andragogical. They teach viewers and listeners about normative truths and expectations. This article uses the andragogical capacity of visual media to build a 3C model of doctoral education: community, communication and connection.