Issues and Challenges in Contemporary Media
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| MLAC4087 | Media, Languages and Cultures | 4 | 20 | Autumn Malaysia |
- Code
- MLAC4087
- School
- Media, Languages and Cultures
- Level
- 4
- Credits
- 20
- Semesters
- Autumn Malaysia
Summary
The module aims at cultivating reflective practitioners and critics in the media industry. It provides students with a range of analytical frameworks, case studies, concepts, principles and practices to better understand contemporary and ongoing issues and challenges in the industry. This requires an attempt to address issues relating to the nature of the industry, more specifically the impact of new media on traditional structures and practices; the implications of patterns of media ownership and control; the autonomy of practitioners; and the role played by the state and market. The module thus is aimed at providing students with an understanding of media industry environments, and their linkages to wider environments and processes
Target Students
Students registered on the MA in Media, Communication and Culture. It is also available as an elective module to Erasmus students in their 4th year and to students on other MA programmes covering related issues offered in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. There are limited places on this module.
Classes
- One 2-hour seminar each week for 10 weeks
Assessment
- 20% Coursework 1: Essay - 1000 words
- 80% Coursework 2: Essay - 5000 words
Assessed by end of autumn semester
Educational Aims
The module aims at cultivating reflective practitioners in the culture industry by providing students with a range of analytical frameworks, concepts, principles and practices relating to work processes in the culture industry. This requires an address to issues relating to the nature of the culture industry, the characteristics of cultural work, the role of creativity and innovation of production and reproduction costs, concentration, control and regulation. The module will enable students to understand culture industry environments, process and working patterns and to undertake a critical analysis of the industry's problems and strategies. In the context of the course as a whole, this module provides students with specialist understanding of the culture industry and of the challenges and opportunities offered by its work processes.Learning Outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding:
On completion of this module, students will demonstrate:
- An understanding of the relevance of academic debates on the relationship between culture and its industrial production
- A knowledge and understanding of the main critical theoretical paradigms and analytical frameworks suitable to the study of the relationship between culture and its industrial production
- An ability to apply a variety of theories to current developments and trends in the studied industries
Intellectual Skills:
Students of this module will have developed:
- The cognitive skills of critical thinking, analysis and synthesis, including the ability to identify assumptions, evaluate statements in terms of evidence to detect false logic or reasoning to identify implicit value and to defive terms adequately and to generalise appropriately
- Knowledge of the general conditions, character, patterns, process and theories of work in the cultural industry
- An appreciation of the complexity of the concepts of 'cultural industry', 'cultural production', 'cultural market', 'cultural hegemony', 'cultural imperialism' and 'cultural globalisation'
- The ability to gather, assess and interpret evidence
- The ability to make reasoned arguments
- The ability to reflect critically on the production of knowledge
Transferable Skills:
On completion of this module, students will demonstrate:
- The capacity to conduct library and internet-based independent research
- Enhanced written and oral communication skills the capacity to critically evaluate different sources of information (historical accounts, media reports, visual and written narrative forms, research and reports from governmental bodies and NGOs, academic research)
- The ability to apply abstract theoretical paradigms to empirical examples and to evaluate their value
- Self-management in terms of time planning and management
Conveners
- Prof Zaharom Nain