Key Cultural Issues in Media and Communication
Unit code: HAM525
| Credit points | 25 Credit Points |
| Duration | 1 Semester |
| Contact hours | 3 Hours per Week |
| Campus | Hawthorn |
| Prerequisites | Nil |
| Corequisites | Nil |
Related course(s)
An elective unit of study in the Master of Arts (Communications) .
NB: This unit will not be offered from 2008 onwards.
Aims and objectives
This unit of study aims to explore the cultural ramifications of the new information technologies which have become so integrated in contemporary post industrial societies. By placing emphasis on the social, political and cultural manifestations inherent in the application of new technologies, this unit aims to challenge widely accepted propositions put forward by both Technological Determinists and Utopians. Students will develop a deeper awareness of the ways in which new technologies in media and communication contributes to ongoing change in the workplace, in educational institutions, in the home and in our conception of leisure.Content
- An introduction into the world of the virtual. Virtual relationships, para-social relations, virtual reality and reality TV.
- Assessing the ideas and arguments presented in Peter Weir's 'The Truman Show'.
- The future of work: surveillance and privacy in the work place.
- New media coverage of the political process - or how new media continues to transform the political process in Australia.
- Media manipulations via cable and satellite. A case study of new media coverage of the September 11th terrorist attack on the US.
- Pornography on the internet. Dennis Altman's notion of 'Global Sex'.
- New media representations of medicine and science. Critique on the role of the internet.
- New media and communications technologies and the future of educational institutions, practices and pedagogy.
- New media and communications technologies and the future of leisure. Popular music – Napster, Gambling – Nambling, video/computer games and organised sport.
Reading materials
Altman, D, Global Sex, Allen and Unwin, 2001.Castells, M, The Power of Identity: The Information Age, Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 2, Blackwell Publishers, 1997.
Chossudovsky, M, The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Pluto Press, 1998.
Costello, T & Millar, R, Wanna Bet?: Winners and Losers in Gambling's luck myth, Allen and Unwin, 2000.
Lumby, C, Gotcha: Life in a Tabloid World, Allen and Unwin, 1999.
Mackay, H & O'Sullivan, T (eds), The Media Reader: Continuity and Transformation, Sage Publications, 1999.
Martin, HP & Schumann, H, The Global Trap: Globalisation and the Assault on Democracy and Prosperity, Pluto Press, 1997.
Rheingold, H, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Addison Wesley Co., 1993.
Wark, M, Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace: The light on the hill in a postmodern world, Pluto Press, 1999.
