Cultural Studies has brought in new perspectives in media studies. Cultural Studies highlights the politics of the sign and it sees media forms as texts, processes and practices. It shows how meaning is generated in these media products. It particularly focuses on identity-based media criticism and the study of media representation.

The Cultural Studies' exploration of television propelled more textual analyses and audience research. Audiences are not passive consumers but contribute new meanings. New media is a postmodern industry and is differentiated from mass media in that mass media may be in digital form but if it is not exhibited and distributed through the electronic medium then it cannot be called new media. The key issues in cyberculture which include identity and subjectivity, race and class, materiality, technocapitalism, the digital divide etc.

Cultural policy is an important, though at times neglected, aspect of Cultural Studies and it is defined as the regulation, management and the administration of cultural forms through institutions like government bodies and art and culture councils that regulate cultural products. Critics like Tony Bennett hold that there is an urgent need of Cultural Studies scholars and academicians to guide cultural policy making and that the divide between policy and criticism needs to be broken.