Department of Media and Communications Option Choices 2011-2012

DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

MA OPTIONS FOR 2011-2012

PLEASE NOTE THAT DAY/TIMES MAY CHANGE SUBJECT TO ROOM ALLOCATIONS

Disclaimer The information in this handbook was correct in August 2011. Whilst it is as far as possible accurate at the date of publication, and the College will attempt to inform students of any substantial changes in the information contained in it, the College does not intend by publication of the handbook to create any contractual or other legal relation with applicants, accepted students, their advisers or any other person. The College is unable to accept liability for the cancellation of proposed programmes of study prior to their scheduled start; in the event of such cancellation, and where possible, the College will take reasonable steps to transfer students affected by the cancellation to similar or related programmes of study. Please see the Terms and Conditions in the relevant prospectus. The College will not be responsible or liable for the accuracy or reliability of any of the information in third party publications or websites referred to in this booklet.

Issued August 2011

ALL OPTIONS ARE SUBJECT TO SPACE AVAILABILITY and numbers for seminars will be capped You must be registered with the department to take any options. Please contact Brenda Ludlow (b.ludlow@gold.ac.uk) to register your choice of options

Media & Communications Department Option Choices 2009/2010 Course Code: Title Page

MC71001A Issues in Media & Culture - AUTUMN MC71015A Political Economy of the Media - SPRING MC71032B The Structure of Contemporary Political Communications - AUTUMN MC71034B Media Audiences and Media Geography SPRING MC71039A Media Ethnicity & The Nation - AUTUMN MC71050A Music as Communication and Creative Practice AUTUMN MC71051A Embodiment & Experience SPRING TERM MC71058B Media Law and Ethics. AUTUMN MC71061A Journalism in Context - AUTUMN MC71065B Strategies in World Cinema - AUTUMN MC71076A Narrative in Practice SPRING MC71078A Cinema & Society - SPRING MC71088A Media, Ritual and Contemporary Public Cultures - SPRING MC71089A Screen Cultures - SPRING TERM MC71092A Campaign Skills: Theory and Practice SPRING MC71100A Media Landscapes -SPRING MC71113A After New Media - AUTUMN MC71116A Asking the Right Questions AUTUMN MC71127A Representing Reality AUTUMN MC71128A Promotional Culture - SPRING
PLEASE NOTE:

4 4 5 6 6 7 7 8 10 10 11 11 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16

Lectures and Seminars in the Department of Media & Communications unless stated are 1 hour duration each. Attendance at Seminars is COMPULSORY in all DEPARTMENTS - failure to attend could result in assessments being marked as zero

MC71001A Issues in Media & Culture - AUTUMN

30 CATS Lecture: Room NAB LG01 Screen Room Day Wednesday Time 2.00pm Duration 2 hours Lecturer Rachel Moore Seminar Leaders

Assessment:

One essay (5000-6000 words) to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12

Theory, philosophy, and artistic practice all share in the business of asking us to pay attention to something we might otherwise not consider, might not see nor hear, and to think about it. Philosophy searches for meaning unfettered by habitual understandings and beliefs. By making something and placing it before us, the practitioner too makes demands on our otherwise quotidian understanding of the world. Theory pays attention to the relationship between meaning and the things we encounter in the world, be they actions, customs, artworks, or media events. It tries to reveal, clarify, or deepen that relationship. In all cases, it is with great care that we cut something out of the continuum of life and frame it, be it by the covers of a book, the focus of a lens, the devices of a story, or the punctuations of dialogue. This course aims to aid in sharpening that care by investigating aesthetic, historic, and social theories about the relationship of creative endeavour to contemporary culture. Some of the topics covered will be: Stillness and Motion; Affect; The Optical and Auditory Unconscious; The Sacred in Everyday Life; Montage; Gesture; The Digital; Experience; Immaterial Labour. The writers will Include: Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Jaques Ranciere, Roland Barthes, Georges DidiHuberman, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Vivian Sobchack, Dziga Vertov, Laura Mulvey. The assignments for this course will range from academic to creative writing, along with 3 short feedbacks on assigned readings due over the 10 week period.

MC71015A Political Economy of the Media - SPRING

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Assessment: Room NAB LG01 Screen Room NAB 1:18 NAB 1:18 Day Tuesday Tuesday Tuesday Time 10am 11am 12pm Duration 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer James Curran Jonathan Hardy Seminar Leader

James Curran/ Jonathan Hardy

One essay (5000-6000 words) to be handed in on Fri 27/04/12

The course is organised around the following questions. What part do the media play in the democratic processes of society? What influences the media? How do different societies organise their media systems? To what extent do new media change things? And (briefly) what influence do the media have? This is a course about the transformations of the media and media systems. From changes in the mass media of broadcasting and print, to multimedia and the Internet, we look at different ways of making sense of these transformations and consider a range of questions concerning media power and influence. This is also a course about the political and economic organisation of the media. We explore a central claim of political economists that there are important relationships between the content and output of media and the way in which media production is organised in a particular economy and social system. Political economy is concerned with questions about the relationship between media and society, with questions of media influence, and questions about how media power connects with other forms of power in society. It is concerned with questions about how media industries and cultural work is organised, and why this matters for the range and quality of what is produced by journalists, media professional and creative workers. It considers such issues as the influence of policy and regulation, market forces and commercial dynamics. In doing so, the course compares culturalist interpretations with studies emphasising the role of the state, media ownership, advertising and market structures as forms of media control. Topics include: media globalisation and national media; political economy of the Internet; media commercialism; media and advertising; new journalism and entertainment media; media convergence and policy; democracy and the media; comparing media and political systems across the globe.

MC71032B The Structure of Contemporary Political Communications - AUTUMN

30 CATS

Lecture: Seminars

Room MRB Screen 1 MRB 13 MRB 13

Day Time Duration Lecturer Monday 10am 1 hour Aeron Davis Monday 11am 1 hour Monday 12pm 1 hour

Seminar Leader Paolo Gerbaudo Paolo Gerbaudo

Assessment: One essay (6,000 words for 30 CATs,) to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12 This course examines the actors and communication processes involved in contemporary political communication. It combines theoretical insights and empirical information from the fields of media studies, journalism, sociology and political science. It mainly focuses on democracies, particularly in the US and UK, but literature and examples are also drawn from other types of political system and country. Weekly topics combine standard political communication topics and contemporary examples, with discussions of related theory and concepts. The following topics are covered: The crisis of politics and media in established democracies; Comparative political and media systems; Mass media and the news production process; Political parties, citizen relations and political marketing; Government media management, war and propaganda; Symbolic and cultural political communication and political cultures; Forms of public participation and public opinion; Media effects and audiences; Digital media and online politics; Globalisation and international political communication. Theories and concepts drawn upon include: Theories of democracy (from weak, representative to direct, deliberative); public sphere theory (national, parliamentary, local, global, online, counter); Political economy and related critiques of capitalist democracy; Work, organisation, professionalization and bureaucracy; Media logic, mediation and mediatisation; Primary definition, media consecration, and celebrity; Field theory and forms of capital; Social networks and social capital; New technologies, technological determinism and social shaping; Globalisation, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and global civil society. Much of the material for this course is highly contemporary, so students are encouraged to maintain an awareness of current developments in political communication in the UK and elsewhere, through newspapers, television, radio and the internet. Students are very much encouraged to bring contemporary examples into the seminar discussions and their essays 30 CATs option students attend 10 weeks of one hour lecture and one hour seminar.

MC71034B Media Audiences and Media Geography SPRING

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room NABLG01 Screen Room NAB 116 NAB 116 Day Thursday Thursday Thursday Time 2pm 4pm 5pm Duration 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer David Morley Seminar Leader David Morley David Morley

NOTE : Syllabus subject to substantial revision'.

Assessment: One essay (5000-6000 words) to be handed in on Fri 27/04/12 This course will review a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of media audiences and on the role of the media in constructing the post-modern geography of the contemporary world. The first section of the course will offer a review of both classical and contemporary models and approaches to the study of media audiences, media effects, media powers and patterns of cultural consumption, The second section of the course addresses questions concerning the specificity of different media and their micro-contexts and conditions of consumption, focussing on the domestic context of consumption of broadcasting (with particular reference to television) and on the significance of micro-studies of specific instances of the uses of new communications and information technologies in the home. The third section of the course then moves back from micro to macro considerations, to examine the role of communications media in constructing the geography of our post-modern electronic landscapes. This section will address a range of issues focusing on processes of identity and boundary construction (at different geographical scales) and the associated issues of mobility and hybridity, within the broader context of processes of globalisation. Here we will also address the role of the media in articulating the private and public spheres, in the construction of both national and transnational identities and senses of home and belonging in an era of time-space compression.

MC71039A Media Ethnicity & The Nation

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room MRB Screen 1 NAB 302 NAB 302 Day Monday Monday Monday Time 2pm 3pm 4pm

- AUTUMN
Duration 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Sara Ahmed Seminar Leader Sara Ahmed Sara Ahmed

Assessment:

One essay (5-6000 word) to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12

This course will examine how ethnicities and nations are constructed within the media. Our aim will be three-fold:1) to analyse how the media constructs ethnicity and nations over time 2) to reflect on the role of the media in shaping nations and ethnicities 3) to explore the ways in formations of ethnicity and nationhood affect practices. We will not only examine a range of contemporary media forms, but we will also situate these forms in relation to longer histories of Western imperialism, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Our task in mapping this history as a history of the present is to explore how contemporary racial and national formations (ideas about Britishness, whiteness, and so on) exist in a complex and intimate relationship to much longer histories of empire. The course will introduce you to key concepts in Black Cultural Studies and Postcolonial Studies, including: colonial discourse, colonial fantasy, othering, hybridity and diaspora. We will also pay attention to the intersection between race, ethnicity and other social relations, including gender, sexuality and class.

MC71050A Music as Communication and Creative Practice AUTUMN

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room NAB LG02 Lecture Theatre NAB 3:02 NAB 3:02 NAB 3:02 Day Friday Friday Friday Friday Time 9am 10am 11am 12pm Duration 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Julian Henriques Seminar Leader Julian Henriques Julian Henriques Julian Henriques

Assessment:

One essay (5000-6000 words) to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12

The course asks for your critical engagement with debates about music, sound and noise. It uses music as a way to understanding cultural values, personal identities and technological issues. It also investigates how music differs from other forms of communication, such as discourse, text and image. With specific examples, the course explores how lyrics, voices and performance techniques convey meaning and value but outside representation. It considers the kinds of the social, political and historical conditions that shape music and its appreciation in a range of musical traditions in different parts of the world. It also investigates the practices and mediations of music making and listening as embodied, social, political, technological and cultural sets of activities that are invariably classed, racialised and gendered. This includes techniques for creating, producing, recording, distributing, consuming and marketing music.

MC71051A Embodiment & Experience SPRING TERM

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room Day Time Duration Lecturer Seminar Leader MRB Screen 1# Tuesday 1pm 1 hour Lisa Blackman MRB 13 Tuesday 2pm 1 hour Lisa Blackman MRB 13 Tuesday 3pm 1 hour Lisa Blackman Assessment: One Project based examined essay (5000 words) and a submitted journal for assessment (1000 words max) to be handed in on Fri 27/04/12 In recent years across the humanities work on the body and embodiment (including sensation, perception, emotion, affect, feeling, memory and so forth) has become increasingly central to discussions of technologies, film, media practices, communication, performance, art, architecture, labour, dance, affect and life. This work breaks down the distinction between human and other life forms and moves discussion of embodiment beyond a distinctly human body. The body we will engage on this course is open, relational, human and non-human, material, indeterminate, multiple, sensient and processual. The arguments we will explore suggest that there is a need to rethink the questions we might ask about bodies and related concepts, such as subjectivity, agency, power, technology, the human, the social and matter. If our bodies are not singularly bounded entities, how does a move to bodies-as-processes reconfigure how we understand mediated communications? The course will engage with the trans-disciplinary area known as body-studies which draws from psychology, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies and cultural studies to consider how a re-thinking of the materiality and immateriality of bodies changes how we might think about perception, the senses, memory, attention, affect and emotion. As well as an academic engagement with a number of key concepts to emerge from these debates - including the concepts of somatic feeling, affective transmission, enactment, practice, mediation and performativity -, the course is also an invitation to the student to reflect differently on aspects of their own embodied experience (this is reflected in the assessment for the course which combines an academic essay with a journal). During the lectures the student will be invited to begin this reflection by grounding conceptual discussion in different case-studies which may challenge our inherited wisdoms on how to understand media and communications. The case-studies may include animal/human communication, digital technology and movement vision, film and abjection, emotions and non-verbal communication, the senses and bodily integrity, medicine, body image, communication at a distance, and transgendered bodies, for example. The course will provide students with some timely and novel ways of thinking about the place of experience within contemporary governance and communication processes.

MC71058B Media Law and Ethics. AUTUMN

30 CATS Lecture: Room NAB LG01 Screen Room MRB 12 MRB 12 Day Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Time 4pm 4pm 5pm Duration 2 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Tim Crook Seminar Leader Tim Crook Tim Crook

Assessment:

One 5,000 6,000 word essay to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12

Introduction to area of study - The course investigates critically to an advanced extent the nature of media law and ethical regulation for media practitioners in the UK, but with comparison with the situation in the USA and references to the experiences of media communicators in other countries. The students are directed towards an advanced analysis of media law, as it exists, the ethical debates concerning what the law ought to be, and the historical development of legal and regulatory controls of communication. The theoretical underpinning involves a course of advanced learning of the subject of media jurisprudence- the study of the philosophy of media law, and media ethicology- the study of the knowledge of ethics in media communication. The course evaluates media law and regulation in terms of its social and cultural context. It is taught in one and a half hour lectures and one hour seminars that involve the discussion of multimedia examples of media communication considered legally and/or morally problematical. Course Reader and textbooks - The Course Reader provides some key elements of reading to enable you to appreciate the course curriculum and develop your research for the essay. There is a range of articles included to back up many of the topics on the course. The resources for the course at learn.gold.ac.uk back up the content of the lecture programme and also contain other useful digital texts to support your learning. There is one essential core course textbook, Comparative Media Law and Ethics, by Tim Crook, (2009) London and New York: Routledge. There are ten copies in the college library. The book is stocked at Blackwells in Goldsmiths and can be obtained online with some discount from Amazon.co.uk and other online services. The textbook is supported by a companion website at: http://www.ma-radio.gold.ac.uk/cmle The course is also supported by a comprehensive resource on the colleges virtual learning environment at https://learn.gold.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=493 The enrolment key is Aristotle Learning Methods. - The course consists of 10 one and a half hour lectures during the Autumn term from 4 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday evenings in the main Screen Room of the NAB followed by 10 one hour seminars held between 4 and 5 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons in Room 12 of the Media Research Building. The seminars involve your participation in mini-trial or moot court discussions where the students divide into rival media law firms and represent fictional trial issues central to contemporary media law and ethics scenarios. A panel of three judges drawn from each side in rotation week by week are engaged to adjudicate the trials and give their rulings. In the process the students are actively involved in preparing their cases in teams, rotate and share the role of presenting through advocacy in five and ten minute submissions and give reasons rulings in the role playing of judicial panels. The students are expected to support their learning through weekly readings and analysis of contemporary media so that they can develop a critical understanding of the methods of legal and regulatory control of media communication. Attendance and participation in the seminars is essential. The lectures are shared with MA Practice students and 3rd year undergraduate students. MA Theory students have an essay as an Assessment outcome and they are obliged to attend the seminars during the autumn term. Core Topics Lecture One. Tim Crook. The Historical Development of Media Law. Religious and Philosophical roots of controlling the dissemination of information. Social and political development of customs and laws relating to communication. Plato, Aristotle, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Judeo-Christian ethics, Utilitarianism, Baruch Spinoza, Emanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Subjectivism and Objectivism. Understanding Natural Law, Positivist Law, Rights Law, Critical and Racial Legal Studies, and the significance of feminist theory in relation to media jurisprudence. Lecture Two. Tim Crook. Introduction to Defamation law and Contempt Issues. Definitions. Explanations. Case Law. Defences in defamation. Contempt for journalists and their defences. Recent developments in statutory concepts and precedents such as Innocent Dissemination (1996) and the House of Lords ruling in Turkington(2000). Analysing the development of the UK Reynolds defence and its comparison with the US Supreme Court case of Sullivan v New York Times. Libel and politics as illustrated by the death of Dr David Kelly and the Hutton Enquiry and the case of George Galloway MP v Daily Telegraph. Comparing UK Libel Law with US Libel Law. The campaign for English libel law reform and the debate over a new defamation bill promised by the Liberal Democrat Conservative coalition. Lecture Three. Angela Phillips. Ethical Judgements and Professional Codes for Media Practitioners. BBC Producer's Guidelines. UK Ofcom code regulating television and radio content. Taste and decency in broadcasting and print.

Regulating privacy for print and broadcast journalists. The operation of the Press Complaints Commission and its code of ethics. Lecture Four. Tim Crook. Media Ethics debates. Media Ethicology and Media Jurisprudence and Journalistic belief systems. The tension between idealism and materialism. The relevance of moral consequentialism and the role of the journalist as courtier. The course will also evaluate three significant case histories exploring legal, cultural and ethical issues relevant to journalistic conduct: The case and trial of black anti-Slavery activist Robert Wedderburn- accused of blasphemy and seditious libel. The case and trial of campaigning editor W. T. Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette. The case and trial of Emile Zola and Jaccuse- resisting the forces of Anti-Semitism. Lecture Five. Tim Crook. State Security and Secrecy. Confidence and injunctions. Information as property and commodification. Confidentiality and the administration of justice. Confidentiality and criminal investigations. Confidentiality and National Security. Analysing key Official Secrets Act prosecutions: Jonathan Aitken, the ABC trial, Sarah Tisdall, Clive Ponting, David Shayler, Katherine Gunn, Derek Pasquil, David Keogh and Leo OConnor. The influence of the intelligence agencies and espionage on notions of media freedom. Censorship in the global war on terrorism. Lecture Six. Tim Crook Privacy. Comparison between USA and UK. Historical development of the legal concept. Analysis of case histories: Naomi Campbell v Daily Mirror Group. Impact of European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence. The development of UK privacy through primary and secondary law. The role of moral panics in galvanizing the ideology of privacy. Equivocating the trump card in civil and constitutional rights. Lecture Seven. Tim Crook. The Media Law of Japan, India, and France. Distinctions and comparisons between the defamation, contempt and privacy laws. The cultural and social contexts. Modern developments in libel, contempt and statutory media law controls. Lecture Eight. Tim Crook The Legal Problematizing of Journalism. Justice and fairness in media law. Other restrictions in the media field: Children and Young Persons. The complainants of Sexual Offences. The social implications of applying secrecy to Family court proceedings. The efficacy of providing media protection to witnesses and other participants in the legal process. Justifying and questioning anonymity. The implications of In Camera hearings and secret judicial processes. Legal pressures applied to publications in terms of broadcasting, book publication and Internet output. The televising and broadcasting of legal proceedings. Lecture Nine. Tim Crook. Human Rights and International Law for Journalists. Debates over the implications of the 1998 UK Human Rights Act. Journalism and the Geneva Convention. The construction of rights and duties for journalists. The ethics and laws of journalism in war. Defining, evaluating and prosecuting the notions of Information Terrorism and Hate Journalism. The ethics of propaganda for journalists. Prosecuting the use of media for communicating racial and religious hatred. Lecture Ten. Tim Crook. International Comparisons. Global issues in Media Law and Ethics. Issues of Freedom of Expression. Human Rights and (In)Human Wrongs. Contrasting values over communication that interferes with the administration of justice. Trial by Media. Is The Roman- Dutch model for defamation and contempt an alternative option? Case histories: Michael Fagan, Bruno Hauptmann, Dr Dick Shepherd, Louise Woodward, Michael Jackson, Oscar Slater, Ruth Ellis, and O.J. Simpson. Liminal events in the prejudicing of criminal trials: The Leo Frank case USA 1913, Hawley Harvey Crippen UK 1912.

MC71061A Journalism in Context - AUTUMN

30 Lecture/workshop Room MRB Screen 1# Day Monday Time 10am Duration 3 hours Lecturer Peter Lee Wright

Assessment: 5000-6000 word essay to be handed in on Fri 6/01/12 Introduction to Area of Study You will be introduced to the major theoretical debates in the study of journalism. We will cover: the current crisis in journalism, questions of political power and the public sphere; ownership forms and how they are changing; the role of audience: as well as regulation and representation. We will also look at journalism as a narrative form. All these debates will be situated firmly in a current and practical context and you will be encouraged to make connections between formal lecturers, seminar presentations and practical discussions of the days events and how they are reported. Sessions will usually be 1 hour followed by a seminar of 1 hour but may be extended if there are special events or speakers. This course will provide you with a theoretical underpinning for your work, which you will develop via personal study later in the year. Learning Outcomes After completing this course you should be able to: Apply conceptual knowledge in order to research and write about the field of journalism. Understand the relationship of journalism to the media industry and how it can be conceptualised theoretically. Understand and evaluate issues concerned with audience and with political and commercial power. Understand how journalism techniques are used to represent and reflect society.

Understand the various ways in which journalism is funded. Assessment, You are required to submit a 5000 word essay related to issues of journalism

MC71065B Strategies in World Cinema - AUTUMN

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room NAB LG01 Screen Room NAB 117 NAB 117 Day Friday Friday Friday Time 1pm 4pm 5pm Duration 3 hours 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Kay Dickinson Seminar Leader Kay Dickinson Kay Dickinson

Assessment: One essay (5-6000 word) to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12 This course examines a selection of films generally understood as examples of world cinema. It analyses the critical and conceptual approaches which have come to define the academic study of national and international film cultures, specifically ideas of third and third world cinema, and theories of regional and transnational cultures of production and reception. Divided into three sections, the course will address a body of movies from Africa, Latin America and Asia that have been released over the last forty years according to three guiding themes: global(ised) economies, activism and populism. We will be investing these films formal strategies and thematic concerns; their social and cultural specificity or universalism (alongside the politics of that distinction); their industrial and institutional contexts; and their national and international status (for example, in their home countries and in the festival circuit). How different forms of colonisation are absorbed and interrogated will be a question that threads through the entire course.

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MC71076A Narrative in Practice SPRING

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room MRB Screen 1 MRB 33 MRB 33 Day FRiday Friday Friday Time 10pm 12pm 1pm Duration 2 hours 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Judy Holland Judy Holland Judy Holland

Assessment This course is assessed by 6,000 word essay, which may include up to 2,000 words of scene analysis to be handed in on Fri 27/04/12 This course is for both screen practitioners whose creative work involves narrative and for screen studies students interested in theoretical issues arising from the narrative process. We look at broad issues - what narratives are, how they differ from non-narratives, what forms they may take (fiction and non-fiction), and what functions they serve in our own and one or more other societies. We look at elements of narrative creation: character, conflict, structure, plot. And we look at the ways in which different aspects of screen productions, particularly editing and sound design, contribute to narrative impact. The speakers are a mix of practitioners who work in the screen industries and theorists who study narrative in traditional, alternative, cross-cultural and new media forms. Examples are drawn from a range of fiction and non-fiction sources,,depending on the speakers own interests, and include short films, documentary and feature films, tv drama and news, games and online media.

MC71078A Cinema & Society - SPRING

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room NAB LG01 NAB 302 NAB 302 NAB 302 Day Friday Friday Friday Friday Time 9am 1pm 2pm 3pm Duration 3 hours 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Rachel Moore Seminar Leader Rachel Moore Rachel Moore TBA

Assessment:

One essay (5-6000 words) to be handed in on Fri 27/04/12

This is basically a course in film theory and film history. It has three major aims. One is to give an account of the various technologies deployed to render and transmit moving images. By no means comprehensive, we will, however look at the attributes of such elements as sound, colour, editing, photography, camera movement, and cinema venues as they change, and continue to change. The second aim is to give an intellectual account of the cinema. For it is largely to leading intellectuals of that time when cinema was recognised a cultural force to be reckoned with, the 1920s, that we will turn to understand not what a certain film means, but what cinema as an aesthetic and cultural force was. Theorists such as Bela Balazs, Jean Epstein, Sergei, Eisenstein, and Walter Benjamin were interested less in understanding a films content than they were in understanding what cinema does. What it does to your senses, to your body, to your sense of yourself as a perceiving being, to your sense of yourself as a person in the world. These theorists gain new relevance as we once again scramble to understand the place of new technologies in our world today, thus they are once again the focus of much scholarly interest. The third, but by far most important aim of the course, is to expose you to cinema that you would not otherwise see, and thus to give you some idea of the many things that cinema can be, and is. You will see early cinema, documentaries, sound cinema, colour cinema, abstract cinema, pictorial cinema, classical narrative cinema, with a mind to broaden and encourage the cinephile in you. This course requires a final paper that uses original theoretical sources, rather than contemporary interpretations, and actual film viewing, rather than scholars assessments of films, to cross illuminate a body of theory and a film or set of films. In addition, over the ten weeks you will turn in three written responses to the set readings. 11

The course meets for three hours, a one hour lecture, a film screening, brief discussion and then a one hour seminar. MC71088A Media, Ritual and Contemporary Public Cultures - SPRING
30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room NAB LG01 Screen Room NAB 3:02 NAB 3:02 NAB 3:02 Day Thursday Thursday Thursday Thursday Time 10am 11am 12pm 1pm Duration 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Seminar Leader Nick Couldry (tbc) Veronica B Veronica B Veronica B

Assessment:

One essay (5-6,000 words) to be handed in on Fri 27/04/12

1. The aim of this course is to explore how the media operate as a focus of ritual action, symbolic
hierarchies, and symbolic conflict, introducing a range of relevant theoretical perspectives and applying them to specific themes from media and public life. The course begins with a general introduction to debates on the media's social impacts (integrative or otherwise). Key theoretical concepts are then outlined: sacred and profane, symbolic power, ritual, boundary, and liminality (two lectures). Specific themes relating to the media's contribution to public life and public space are then explored: celebrity and ordinariness; fandom and media pilgrimages; media events and public ritual; mediated self-disclosure (from talk shows to the Webcam); 'reality' television and everyday surveillance; and the media and symbolic protest (total six lectures). The course concludes with a review of ethical questions arising from the media's role in public life and public space. 2. This course explores various approaches, theoretical and empirical, to understand what might broadly be called the ritual dimensions of contemporary media. Among the questions the course addresses are the following: What, in disciplinary terms, can anthropological theories of culture, ritual and power contribute to the understanding of contemporary media? What might we mean by the terms ritual and ritualisation in relation to media? How do we analyse those times when media production and usage depart from the ordinary and everyday, and take on larger social resonances, for example the national broadcasting of major public events? How is the growth of celebrity culture connected to questions of social power? How should we interpret the medias claims to represent reality, for example in the proliferating genre of reality TV? Why do non-media people want to appear in or on the media, and with what consequences do they do so? How is medias power connected with the practices of state and corporate power and with the latters use of media (including for surveillance)? Are medias ritual dimensions played out differently in different media cultures? How do media rituals affect contemporary public cultures, and with what ethical consequences? Lectures move from introductory material and theoretical concepts (in the early weeks) to specific aspects of contemporary media production (in the last two-thirds of the term). Students will be encouraged in seminar discussion and in their written work to apply the theoretical concepts introduced in the course to the analysis of specific examples.

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MC71089A Screen Cultures - SPRING TERM

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room MRB Screen 1 MRB 12 MRB 12 MRB 12 Day Monday Monday Monday Monday Time 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm Duration 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Pasi Valiaho Seminar Leader Pasi Valiaho Pasi Valiaho Pasi Valiaho

Assessment: Assessment is by 2 critical assignments of 3000 words the first due in week 7 and the second on the 27/04/12. The assignments will offer the opportunity of combining creative writing with an analytical approach. Screens are now a dominant presence and interface in culture in a number of suggestive ways. First, screens are no longer defined by their institutional location (the cinema, the living room, the office) but are ubiquitous. Public space is characterised by screens of information, advertising and surveillance that affect the ways in which we perceive, use and move through spaces. Second, the spectacular scale of the cinematic screen is giving way to micro screens, the attributes of a personalised and mobile life-style of atomistic subjects. Third, the discrete identity of media objects is increasingly lost to a convergence of forms within the computer terminal. This course explores our relationship to these transformations, the ways in which our bodies are re-positioned by screens, our modes of expression and communication are affected, and our experience of time and space is reworked. In the first part of the course, we will examine screens in relation to shifting configurations of power, dealing with questions concerning attention, subjectification and new cerebral paradigms regarding how contemporary time-based media operate in the society in which they are embedded. In the second part, we will direct our attention to more phenomenologically oriented theorizations of bodily experience and screens. We will discuss issues such as memory, time, tactility and movement especially in the context of screen-based arts, and also investigate the relation between aesthetics and politics. These issues are examined through a range of thinkers including the work of Jonathan Crary, Anne Friedberg, Mark Hansen, Jacques Ranciere and Michel Foucault. The course will be of interest to students concerned with film and screen theory, media and power, philosophies of mediation and embodiment, and critical thought.

MC71092A Campaign Skills: Theory and Practice SPRING

15 CATS ONLY Lecture/workshop Campaign Presentations Room MRB Screen 1# MRB Screen 2# Day Tuesday (weeks 1-6) Friday (week 11) Time 6pm 5pm Duration 2 hours 2 hours Lecturer Mike Kaye (Aeron Davis) Mike Kaye (Aeron Davis)

Assessment: The course is assessed by work on a campaign chosen by students. This involves students undertaking a short, group-based practical project, which is assessed by a mixture of group presentation (40%) and personal log/detailed campaign outline (60%). to be handed in on 27/04/12 This course is about practical campaigning issues and is primarily taught by a campaign expert. It can only be taken in conjunction with the course Structures of Contemporary Political Communications (15 or 30 CATs version). The course is convened by Aeron Davis, but mostly taught by Mike Kaye, an external campaign expert with 20 years experience, and who has taught the course for the last four years. The course curriculum covers: Essentials in advocacy, Working with decision makers and parliamentary lobbying, Campaigning for change mobilising public opinion, International pressure using the United Nations, Formulating and implementing a campaign. Please note that places on this module are strictly limited and MA Political Communications students will have first priority, followed by MA Brand Development students. (Please choose a back up option in case course is full)

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MC71100A

Media Landscapes -SPRING

Room MRB Screen 1# Day Tuesday Time 10am Duration 2 hours Lecturer Robert Smith Mark Dunford

30 CATS Lecture/workshop

Assessment: 5000-6000 word essay to be handed in on Fri 27/04/12 A re-imagining of media practices. This programme aims to draw from the knowledge gained from the course dealing with the structures and process of contemporary communications. Building upon the core course on entrepreneurial modelling, this programme will also compliment the other options on the media pathway addressing the political economy of the media and the consideration of other explanations of the functioning of the mass media. The course engages with critical debates on media practice and links these directly to entrepreneurship and development of business models. The premise for the programme is that the only way to predict the future is to invent it. Students will be asked to critically engage with ways that future media practices and outputs can be used for business and to determine their own role in those processes. The programme opens up different ways of thinking about the media landscape and students are encouraged to develop their own ideas for projects or businesses. Bespoke sessions look at the media as a shop, and different entrepreneurial business models,. Guest lecturers from industry introduce sessions engaging with the ways that the media is changing,. including workshop sessions on Intellectual Property (IP), marketing and, media audiences, These engage with futuring the media production processes, presenting new business models for selling media product, planning for growth using business school methodologies to refine the plans and capturing value. The final session draws together the media pathway in preparation for the next major project module.

MC71113A
30 CATS Lecture:

After New Media - AUTUMN

Room Day Time Duration Lecturer Seminar Leader NAB LG01 Thursday 10am 1 hour Sarah Kember Screen Room Seminars NAB 1.18 Thursday 12pm 1 hour Sarah Kember NAB 1.18 Thursday 1pm 1 hour Sarah Kember Assessment: One essay (5-6,000 words) to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12 This course builds on, and challenges, existing approaches to media by tracing the transition from debates on new media to debates on mediation. Mediation takes us from a more spatial, black-boxed approach to separate media, and separate aspects of the media (production, content, reception) towards a more temporal approach which is often invoked but rarely developed. The course will ask what it means to study the media as a complex process which is simultaneously economic, social, cultural, psychological and technical. It will trace the origins of this question in debates on remediation that are critical of new media teleology (and its links to capital), and it will trace the evolution of this question through a range of philosophical and contextual approaches which will frame the concept of mediation in relation to creativity, conservatism, change and continuity. In the context of specific media events such as the LHC project at CERN (Big Crunch?), the current global financial crisis (Credit Crunch), the worlds first face transplant, the ongoing quest for life on Mars and the emergence of intelligent media, the course will investigate the relation between the event and its mediation. Would it be more accurate to say that rather than being represented by the media, these events are performed through mediation? If events are performative, then how should we respond to them in our critiques? The assessment for this course is an essay which addresses a specific event and reflects on all aspects of mediation as performativity including its own.

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MC71116A
30 CATS Lecture:

Asking the Right Questions AUTUMN

Room MRB Screen 1 Day Wednesday Time 11am Duration 2 hours Lecturer Peter Lee-Wright

Assessment: 5000-6000 word essay to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12

This course aims to equip students with the critical, analytical and practical skills to research and construct stories for public consumption. This involves three elements: the procedural asking the right questions of whom, when and where; the political knowing the organisational context in which the story has emerged, the constructs in which it will be seen, and the ways in which it will be perceived; and the personal knowing what you can or cannot bring to the story, and managing the human factors that will enhance or obscure your story. The lectures in the first half of term concentrate on the British system, governmental and local, and in particular on the many different opportunities now available to online researchers. The second half of term concentrates on specialist territories that require particular understanding and research skills, from investigative journalism and statistics to politics and the law. In week 1 you will be assigned a subject brief a beat a research report on which must be undertaken,

MC71127A
30 CATS Lecture:

Representing Reality AUTUMN

Day Wednesday Time 9am Duration 1 hour Lecturer Mao Mollona Rachel Moore Chris Berry Peter Lee-Wright Seminar Leaders

Room NAB LG01 Screen Room NAB 1.02

Seminars

Wednesday

4pm

2 hours

Mao Mollona Rachel Moore Chris Berry Peter Lee-Wright

MRB Screen 1

Tuesday Wks 2-5 & 7-11

4PM

2 hours

Assessment:

One essay (5000-6000 words) to be handed in on Fri 06/01/12

This course will explore the documentary form from the combined perspectives of Screen Studies and Visual Anthropology. It will consider documentary production in its various social and historical contexts and across different distribution platforms (from the cinema to the art gallery), and deal with current debates about documentary ethics and aesthetics. Taught by a range of Lecturers from the Media & Communications and Anthropology Departments, it will encompass both Anglophone and international (including Chinese) documentary traditions, and historical examples from the early Soviet avant-garde to contemporary reality TV.

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MC71128A Promotional Culture - SPRING

30 CATS Lecture: Seminars Room NAB LG01 Screen Room NAB 1.17 NAB 1.17 Day Monday Monday Monday Time 10am 11am 12pm Duration 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour Lecturer Aeron Davis Seminar Leader Aeron Davis Aeron Davis

Assessment: One essay (6,000 words for 30 CATs, 3,000 words for 15 CATs ) to be on Fri 27/04/12 This course looks at the rise of promotional culture (public relations, advertising, marketing and branding) and promotional intermediaries and their impact on society. The first part of the course will discuss the history of promotional culture and will offer some conflicting theoretical approaches with which to view its development. These include: professional/industrial, economic, political economy, post-Fordist, audience, consumer society, risk society, and postmodern perspectives. The second part will look at specific case areas of promotional culture. These are in: commodities and services (fashion, cars); popular media and culture (news, music, TV and film); celebrities and public figures (film, literature, business and celetoids); politics, politicians and parties (mediation, marketing, spin); civil society and promotional conflict (unions, interest groups, corporations); virtual and abstract markets (financial products, company shares, modern art). In each of these areas questions will be asked about the influence of promotional practices on the production, communication and consumption of ideas and products as well as larger discourses, fashions/genres and socio-economic trends. Each week will also interogate core social concepts and their relationship to promotional culture. These include value, identity, symbolic power, autonomy, and pluralism. 30 CATs option students attend 10 weeks of one hour lecture and one hour seminar.

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