Email module leader: roger.perkins@buckingham.ac.uk
One term: 15 units
The module aims to introduce you to some key concepts in media analysis, as practised both within the academy and, self-critically, from within contemporary media industries. You’ll learn how current theoretical positions can be usefully and practically applied to the media industries through case studies. By the end of the module, you should have gained:
- A theoretical understanding of the mediation of messages through representation, narrativisation and the manipulation of image.
- An understanding of how media theory impacts / fail to impact on media practice.
- Some ability to apply the above to a specific cultural medium.
- A basic theoretical understanding of how semiology and ideology interact.
- A general overview of the role of mass media in modern culture, both globally and locally.
- A clear understanding of contemporary UK media industries, their formats and audiences.
- An understanding of the general debate over media ownership.
This module is assessed by means of a 2-hour examination (50%), 2 analytical essays (20% each), and participation / tutorial contributions (10%).
The topics you’ll cover include:
- modern culture and mass media
- ways of seeing: ideology and semiotics
- the structure of contemporary British media industries
- creating audiences
- freedom of the press: theory and practice
- advertising and the media
- who owns the media? state, private and popular interest
- technological change: the digital revolution
Useful texts for study:
- Branston, Gill & Roy Stafford. The media student’s book (3rd ed., London: Routledge, 2003). ISBN: 0-415-25611-9.
- Curran, James & Jean Seaton. Power without responsibility: the press and broadcasting in Britain (6th ed., London: Routledge, 2003). ISBN: 0-415-24390-4.
- Holland, Patricia. The television handbook (2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2000). ISBN: 0-415-21282-0.
- Keeble, Richard. The newspapers handbook (3rd ed., London: Routledge, 2001). ISBN: 0-415-24083-2.
- O’Sullivan, Tim, Brian Dutton et al. Studying the media, an introduction (2nd ed., London: Arnold, 1998). ISBN: 0-340-67685-X.
- Price, Stuart. Media studies (2nd ed., Harlow: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1998). ISBN: 0-582-32834-9.
- Stokes, Jane & Anna Reading. The media in Britain: current debates and developments (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). ISBN: 0-333-73063-1.
- Watson, James. Media communication, an introduction to theory and process (2nd ed., Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). ISBN: 1-4039-0149-X.M
