Digital Media: Contexts and Histories

Module overview

Digital media shape the world around us, but they emerge from longer histories rooted in specific social, cultural, industrial, and technological contexts. This module will introduce students to these contexts and histories, and provide a critical understanding of the ways in which contemporary forms of digital culture expand and develop our traditional media landscape.

Aims and Objectives

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
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
Research and engage with scholarship on digital media

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

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

Knowledge and Understanding

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

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

Learning and Teaching

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

Study time
Type	Hours
Preparation for scheduled sessions	80
Practical classes and workshops	30
Lecture	20
Seminar	20
Completion of assessment task	150
Total study time	300

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

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

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

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

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

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

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

Assessment

Summative

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

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay	60%
Individual project	40%

Referral

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

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay	100%

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.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Individual project	40%
Essay	60%

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External