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Professional Diploma in Media Studies

Definition

Media studies is an area of scholarly inquiry approached from both humanities and social science perspectives that considers the nature and effects of mass media upon individuals and society, as well as analysing actual media content and representations. A cross-disciplinary field, media studies uses techniques and theorists from sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, art theory, information theory, and economics. In the UK, media studies emerged in the 1960s from the academic study of English, and from literary criticism more broadly. It tended to grow through colleges and polytechnics, rather than through established universities. Nevertheless, the Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), founded by Richard Hoggart at the University of Birmingham in 1964, was a notable exception.

Media studies can partially be understood as a response to the McCarthyist paranoia of the influences of the mass media. In the UK, Mary Whitehouse's right-wing National Viewers' and Listeners' Association was concerned at the growing 'permissiveness' of broadcasting, and in the US a number of pressure groups have campaigned against the supposed corrupting influence of popular media - in particular on children.

Course Synopsis

This course will facilitate those students who wish to obtain a foundation in media studies and in particular those with an interest in journalism, advertising and global media considerations. The course will be made up of 10 Units of study and completion of a thesis. The ten study units are set out as follows:

OC001 Media History

OC002 Media Ethics

OC003 Media and Television

OC004 Audio Production

OC005 Photography and Typography

OC006 Mass Communication

OC007 Journalism

OC008 New Media Development

OC009 Media and Web Design

OC010 Global Media

The course will be supported by the following textbooks. These are optional but highly recommended in order to improve the depth of coverage.

Media, Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences
By David Croteau, William Hoynes

Media/Impact with Infotrac: An Introduction to Mass Media (with CD-ROM and Infotrac)
By Shirley Biagi

Course Contents

OC 001 Media History

This unit considers the definitions of media. How the concept of media came into being and how it subsequently evolved into what we now term 'new media'. Has the philosophy really changed or has the technology just made original concepts more smarter? The unit will examine the influences on media and how these have changed over the last 30 years. We will examine current trends and consider how media concepts will continue to evolve over the next 10 years.

OC 002 Media Ethics

Media ethics is that universe of ethics dealing with the particular ethical principles and standards of media worldwide. Media ethics includes, but is not limited to, ethical dilemmas and other such questions of mass media. One important subsection of media ethics is journalism ethics. Also of relevancy are questions with regard to print and electronic media content, community standards, media censorship, media bias (in the U.S., 'liberal' vs. 'conservative' bias), propaganda, and related issues as viewed from the standpoint of ethics. Media ethics also deals with the relationship of media and media economics where things such as -deregulation of media, concentration of media ownership, FCC regulations in the U.S., media trade unions and labour issues, and other such worldwide regulating bodies, citizen media (low power FM, community radio) - have ethical implications.

OC 003 Media and Television

Canadians under the age of twenty - the 'Echo Generation' as they are often called - make up a quarter (26%) of the country's population.

Not only is this generation strong in numbers, it also exerts enormous economic influence within the family - a fact not lost on the marketing and advertising industries. One an ignored demographic for advertisers, today's young people have become the most marketed-to generation in history, thanks to their spending power and their future clout as adult consumers. This unit explores the impact in other countries and how television is used to support media and corporate objectives.

OC 004 Audio Production

The audio visual production in media broadly covers the following classifications:

• Animation
• Commercials
• Computer games
• Corporate production
• Facilities (which includes post production)
• Film
• Interactive media
• Photo imaging
• Radio
• Television and animation

This unit examines the concept of audio production, the latest technology developments and the influences these have had in new media applications.

OC 005 Photography and Typography

Students in this course acquire a more sophisticated and refined understanding of and approach to typographic form and design. Projects deal with the design of letterforms, wordforms, and texts. Aspects of the history of letterforms, printing, and book design are examined. Typography is studied in the context of language communication. Concept generation, visualization and the design process. Systematic approaches to the design of complex information, including typographic, graphic and diagrammatic communication. Symbol creation and the design of visual identity systems. Photographic image creation and manipulation. Narrative concepts and the construction of meaning. Social marketing. Introduction to the computer as a tool for language and visual communication. Project research and management. Open exploration of non-applied visual communication design issues

OC 006 Mass Communication

The term "mass communication" is a term used in a variety of ways which, despite the potential for confusion, are usually clear from the context. These include (1) reference to the activities of the mass media as a group, (2) the use of criteria of a concept, "massiveness," to distinguish among media and their activities, and (3) the construction of questions about communication as applied to the activities of the mass media. Significantly only the third of these uses does not take the actual process of communication for granted. "Mass communication" is often used loosely to refer to the distribution of entertainment, arts, information, and messages by television, radio, newspapers, magazines, movies, recorded music, and associated media. This general use of the term is only appropriate as designating the most commonly shared features of such otherwise disparate phenomena as broadcast television, cable, video playback, theater projection, recorded song, radio talk, advertising, and the front page, editorial page, sports section, and comics page of the newspaper. In this usage "mass communication" refers to the activities of the media as a whole and fail to distinguish among specific media, modes of communication, genres of text or artifact, production or reception situations, or any questions of actual communication. The only analytic purpose this use of the term serves is to distinguish mass communication from interpersonal, small-group, and other face-to-face communication situations. A second use of the term involves the various criteria of massiveness which can be brought to bear in analyses of media and mass communication situations. This unit examines the concepts in greater detail.

OC 007 Journalism

Journalism is a discipline of collecting, analyzing, verifying, and presenting information regarding current events, trends, issues and people. Those who practice journalism are known as journalists. News-oriented journalism is sometimes described as the "first rough draft of history" (attributed to Phil Graham), because journalists often record important events, producing news articles on short deadlines. While under pressure to be first with their stories, news media organizations usually edit and proofread their reports prior to publication, adhering to each organization's standards of accuracy, quality and style. Many news organizations claim proud traditions of holding government officials and institutions accountable to the public, while media critics have raised questions about holding the press itself.

OC 008 New Media Development

New Media is a relatively new field of study that has developed around cultural practices with the computer playing a central role as the medium for production, storage and distribution. New Media studies reflect on the social and ideological impact of the personal computer, computer networks, digital mobile devices, ubiquitous computing and virtual reality. The study includes researchers and propagators of new forms of artistic practices such as interactive installations, net art, software art, new interfaces for musical expression, the subsets of interaction, interface design and the concepts of interactivity, multimedia and remediation. 'Media' (the plural of medium) refer to technologies used to communicate messages and include mass media (newspapers, TV, radio), popular media (film, books) and digital media (computer games, the World Wide Web, virtual reality) and others.

'New' in this context means:

• the relative novelty of digital computing
• the unprecedented speed of evolution and mutation of devices and technologies
• undeveloped, imperfect and experimental environments
• subjective novelty, most of the artists and theoreticians currently studying digital culture have migratedfrom different disciplines

New media are also the common denominator of such disciplines as (new) media art (from Nam June Paik to net.art), (new) media activism, (new) media studies (from Marshall McLuhan to Lev Manovich) and journalistic media criticism (from Neil Postman to Howard Rheingold). This unit explores the advances in new media and considers developments in new technology.

OC 009 Media and Web Design

A website is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. Designing a website is defined as the arrangement and creation of web pages that in turn make up a website. A web page consists of information for which the website is developed. On a different perspective, a webpage can be compared to a page in a book and a website is to a book. So, these are the main aspects involved in web design. Moving to the each in detail, the web page consists of text and images. It can also be said as that a web page is similar to a file which has all the data. To support the data or information the images are added to the web page. To be more technical the first page of a website is known as Home Page. Each and every page in a website is a HTML file which has its own web address. Web design involves some aspects or points to be remembered which will take the website to the people. This unit examines the importance of website development and the use of websites in media development.

OC 010 Global Media

Globalisation is one of the most potent concepts informing academic debates across many disciplines on the threshold of the 21st century. Issues of communication, culture and media lie close to the heart of this contested concept which variously refers to the collapse of time and space as obstacles to human activity, to processes of economic and cultural expansion, to the undermining of the nation state as a critical building block for any transnational activity, to parallel tendencies towards both uniformity and fragmentation. Note: This module recommends supplementary reading : Media in Global Context Annabelle Sreberny, Dwayne Winseck, Jim McKenna, Oliver Boyd-Barrett

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