CM517 : Communication, Technology and the Politics of Culture

Scope and Aims of this Module :

The module addresses the questions : ‘how do new media technologies impact on culture?’ ; and/or ‘how do cultural and social factors shape the new systems/machines for making meaning?’

It will examine the interplay between technological, socio-economic and political factors in shaping the forms and roles of media-based [‘popular’] culture. It will examine the emergence, adoption and widespread use of new media technologies in their cultural and social as well as techno-economic contexts.

One key aim is to explore contrasting ideas and key theories in the fields of communication and cultural studies concerning the distinctive role and influence of technological factors in shaping cultural and social change. The module is also strongly framed/focused around successive generations of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ new media and how they become embedded in cultural and social life. It examines how major waves of new media innovations are shaped, diffused, adopted and institutionalised by particular configurations of cultural, social, and political forces, as well as by technological factors. The module also explores the factors shaping the organisation and socio-cultural roles of major media and how these relate to specific historical and cultural movements or socio-economic configurations.

This module will seek to combine theoretical and historical research materials. It will start by exploring the role of print media in early modernity and the competing notions of the ‘public sphere’ in the late Enlightenment period. It will then move on to explore the period of the 1880s-1920s, which gave rise to the first wave of truly ‘mass media’ (and which may be defined as the ‘first multi-media revolution’). It carries the story down to the contemporary ‘dominant medium’ of TV and through to the emergent/new communication media such as the Internet/WWW and digital ‘multimedia’ products/services.

Other Modules

• [CM541] Information and Communications in International Relations     Click here for further information

• [CM556] Communication Theory and New Media [M.Sc. Multimedia]     Click here for further information

• [CM583] Communication Systems [M.Sc. Science Communication]     Click here for further information

• [CM599] Post-Graduate Students' Support Module                  Click here for further information

• [CM519] International Communications [MA-CCS/MAP]     Click here for further information