Digital Media: Contexts and Histories

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Engage with and apply critical methodologies covered in the module to produce a reasoned and convincing argument in written work
• Research and engage with scholarship on digital media
• Demonstrate the skills and methods required for a critical engagement with scholarship on digital media and communications: such as, how to embark on research, how to write a critical essay, or how to reference your scholarly sources and archival research findings

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Academic debates and theories concerning digital media and their histories and contexts
• Digital media as objects and texts
• The historical evolution of the social, cultural, industrial, and technological contexts of digital media

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Produce assessed work that meets academic conventions
• Meet assignment deadlines
• Clearly and persuasively present an argument
• Plan and prioritise learning and research activities using appropriate resources

This module will provide a historical overview of the social, industrial, cultural, and technological contexts that shaped the emergence of digital media at the turn of the twenty-first century. The module will introduce you to scholarly debates, methods, and research skills for the critical analysis of a range of media forms, formats, and objects. Emphasis will be placed on the historical evolution of modern mass media and how these developments both enable and shape the digital shift.

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching Methods

• Lectures – introducing key themes, debates, concepts and historical materials
• Seminars – allowing you to debate and clarify key themes, debates, concepts and materials
• Screenings – engaging with digital media texts and objects relevant to an understanding of weekly themes, lectures, and readings
• Tutorials – allowing you to discuss module content and assignment details with the lecturer and seminar tutor

Learning Activities

• Classroom discussion in seminars, critical thinking, peer engagement
• Teacher-led learning in lectures, with an interactive element
• Independent research, home viewing and reading

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Jentery Sayers (2018). The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities. London: Routledge.

Jihoon Kim (2016). Between Film, Video, and the Digital: Hybrid Moving Images in the Post-Media Age. London: Bloomsbury.

Bruce Block (2020). The Visual Story: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV, and Digital Media. New York: Routledge.

Nick Couldry (2012). Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Geard Goggin (2012). New Technologies and the Media. New York: Palgrave.

Paul McDonald, et al., eds. (2021). Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines. New York: New York University Press.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External