Master
2023/2024
Culture, Media and Research
Type:
Compulsory course (Critical Media Studies)
Area of studies:
Media Communications
Delivered by:
Institute of Media
When:
1 year, 2-4 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
students of one campus
Master’s programme:
Критические медиаисследования
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
9
Contact hours:
76
Course Syllabus
Abstract
The course Culture, Media, and Research trains students in working with cultural studies and ethnographic perspectives for studying and researching media and digital cultures. We discuss a broad spectrum of phenomena associated with contemporary media cultures, including transgression, celebrity activism, protest, social movements, selfies, attention, labour and curating economies as they relate to a wide range of contemporary media, from film and music clips to the internet and performance art. The course takes on the idea that practice occurs within social, economic and technological contexts and that practice and contexts should be understood dynamically and always in relation to each other. The course highlights issues surrounding power, class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’ with an emphasis on style, aesthetics and the visual. The students are expected to develop their own written or visual projects in reference to the themes of the course and actively participate in the seminars and discussions by bringing their own examples and case studies. In the first two classes of Module 2 Media Cultures we introduce the approaches and perspectives of the course. Following, each week focuses on one phenomenon or cluster of phenomena related to contemporary media cultures. The aim of this Module is to exercise our ways of seeing and writing about the mediascapes surrounding us. In the 3rd Module, Reception and Audience Studies, students will have the opportunity to engage with key theoretical approaches and debates around the broader study of reception and audiences. During the first weeks of this module, students will engage with key theoretical approaches and scholars, starting from Jauss to Stuart Hall and beyond. Then, students will concentrate on the conceptualization of audiences and publics, as seen through different theoretical lens. Next, the module focuses on contemporary debates regarding how audiences and reception are observed in the digital environment, concentrating on networked, imagined, and affective publics. During the last sessions of this module, students will concentrate on research methods and techniques for the study of reception and audiences, emphasizing on different examples and studies. In Module 4 Posthumanism and its Discontents we explore arguments and counterarguments, approaches and critiques, topics and currents that revolve around ‘posthumanism’, understood as a perspective that privileges the dissolution, deconstruction, amplification, enhancement and hybridization of the category of the ‘human’ as this is principally understood in Enlightenment thought. We will be doing that by focusing on the impacts and forms of an eclectic array of issues and concepts, including new materialism, biotechnologies, machine-seeing, data, AI, monsters and cyberculture. In addition to the readings, in each class, the students are invited to watch and think through a film based on the week’s lecture and/or reading material.
Learning Objectives
- To offer students a comprehensive toolkit of concepts and perspectives around contemporary media cultures.
- To train students in critical analytical thinking on contemporary media cultures.
- To train students in being theoretically minded and lead their independent research projects.
- To train students into thinking about the interrelations between cultural practice and media contexts.
- To identify how key concepts, critical perspectives, and methodological approaches are used in studying reception and audiences.
- Critically evaluate and assess scholarly arguments and research methods for understanding and researching audiences and reception, focusing on different examples and media.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- Analyzes cultural practice in tandem with the overlapping political, technological and economic contexts in which occurs.
- Conducts research on practices, users, publics and audiences.
- Develops critical, reflexive and analytical thinking with respect to the contemporary media and cultural politics.
- Develops critical thinking in relation to online social phenomena.
- Assesses contemporary media in a theoretically informed way.
- Develops the ability to collaborate and think collectively with peers.
Course Contents
- Part 1. Cultures, Media Cultures and Subcultures
- Part 1. Ethnographies of Media Cultures
- Part 1. Curating, Social Media and Technologies of the Self
- Part 1. Transgression
- Part 1. Canceling
- Part 1. More than Human
- Part 1. Oral presentations
- Part 2. Reception Theory
- Part 2. Audiences and publics
- Part 2. Theoretical approaches on Audiences and Reception
- Part 2. Audiences in the digital age
- Part 2. Researching audiences and audience research
- Part 2. Examples and Case studies
- Part 3. Visual Culture and Technologies of Vision
- Part 3. (New) Materialism
- Part 3. Making Kin
- Part 3. Cyberpunk and the Californian ideology
- Part 3. Technology and Immortality
- Part 3. ‘Ugly’ Others: monsters, viruses and pests
Assessment Elements
- Class Attendance/ Participation
- Homework (Seminar Tasks)
- Lectures/Seminars participation and tasks
- Précis assignment
- Essay or film
- 15 min presentation on any reading of Module 2
- Class Attendance/ Participation
- Group Presentation
- Homework (Seminar Tasks)
Interim Assessment
- 2023/2024 2nd module0.4 * 15 min presentation on any reading of Module 2 + 0.3 * Class Attendance/ Participation + 0.3 * Homework (Seminar Tasks)
- 2023/2024 3rd module0.2 * Group Presentation + 0.6 * Lectures/Seminars participation and tasks + 0.2 * Précis assignment
- 2023/2024 4th module0.3 * Class Attendance/ Participation + 0.3 * Essay or film + 0.4 * Homework (Seminar Tasks)
