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Understanding Media & Communications (MECM90039)
Graduate courseworkPoints: 25Dual-Delivery (Parkville)
Overview
Availability | Semester 2 - Dual-Delivery |
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Fees | Look up fees |
This subject provides students with foundational case studies and conceptual frameworks for understanding the history of media technologies, institutions, practices, and products. Students will develop a critical understanding of the issues and debates surrounding the complex transformation of media spaces and practices from the broadcast era to the contemporary digital communications landscape. Students will explore the impact of digital technologies on the production, distribution, and consumption of mediated communications with an emphasis on the dynamic consequences of these shifts for global communications and networked publics. Students will develop academic skills of critical thinking to engage with and evaluate literature, and to write argumentatively.
Intended learning outcomes
Students who successfully complete this subject should be able to:
- Explain major theoretical and historical approaches to the study of media and communications in globally networked digital cultures;
- Interpret key changes in mediated communications from the broadcast era to the contemporary digital communications landscape;
- Analyse different media texts, technologies, industries, and practices using a variety of conceptual approaches;
- Assess the impact of digital technologies on the production, distribution and/or consumption of mediated communications in specific cases; and
- Employ academic conventions in completing assessment tasks, including identifying appropriate resources, engaging critically with scholarly literature, and marshalling logic and evidence in the construction of an argument.
Generic skills
Upon successful completion of this subject, graduates should be able to:
- Reflect on their own use of media and relate this to broader theoretical issues
- Critically analyse the role of contemporary communications landscape
- Prepare and present their ideas in both verbal and written mode at an intermediate level and in conformity to conventions of academic presentation; and
- Participate in discussion and group activities and be sensitive to the participation of others.
Last updated: 4 March 2025