Handbook

Note: The course code for this course was previously ARTS1090

Understanding how media is used and incorporated into everyday life is essential for professional communicators today. Beyond merely informing and entertaining us, media and media technologies have become intricately involved with our daily routines and rituals from waking up, communicating, and coordinating with family and friends, to shopping and negotiating our movements through public space. We use media more than ever before, which means knowing how to analyse and understand this shift is essential to reaching people through media as a communication professional. Rather than asking what media do to you, this course asks what we do with media. You will be introduced to academic approaches for understanding people’s media practices in ways that produce grounded and realistic explanations of the power of media in our everyday lives. You will be taught the skills involved with scholarly inquiry including reading and writing about the media as well as researching and judging the relevance of academic claims about the media. By the end of the course, you will have developed a reflexive understanding of the role of media in our everyday lives and advanced skills in critically assessing media scholarship.