Sample paper
University: Swinburne University of Technology
Word Count: approximately 2,700 words
Week 4: Form Versus Content
New media technologies reshape communication and social life, while media texts actively construct rather than mirror reality, shaped by social, economic, and political forces. McLuhan's technological determinism ("the medium is the message") is contrasted with Raymond Williams's cultural materialist emphasis on media as socially produced and used within economic and political contexts.
Week 5: Understanding Audiences
The active audience concept and Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model (dominant, negotiated, and oppositional readings) illustrate how audiences interpret media messages variably based on background and context, distinguishing open texts (multiple possible meanings) from closed texts (a single intended message). A personal negotiated reading of a fast-fashion documentary endorsed its environmental and labour critique while questioning its emphasis on individual consumer responsibility over systemic industry and governmental factors.
Week 6: Representation and Stereotypes
Kimberle Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality frames how overlapping forms of marginalisation compound for specific individuals, while media can reinforce or challenge gender and racial stereotypes through representation choices. Mainstream media diversity is argued to be essential for challenging existing power structures, illustrated through Black Panther's positive representation of a technologically advanced African nation and Pose's portrayal of Black and Latino queer ballroom culture in 1980s-90s New York.
Week 7: Celebrities and Celebritisation
Van Krieken's concept of micro-celebrity (ordinary people gaining social media influence) and global celebrity culture are examined for their effects on contemporary fame and identity. A Dior "J'adore" perfume advertisement featuring Charlize Theron is analysed ideologically (associating luxury and traditional femininity with an aspirational lifestyle) and through a political economy lens (leveraging celebrity fame to drive brand profit and market position).
Week 8: Making Sense of Taste
Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and capital conversion frame taste and cultural preference as socially structured rather than purely personal, reproducing power relations across economic, cultural, and social capital forms. Applied to the television series Breaking Bad, its reception as quality "taste" versus morally troubling content is shown to depend heavily on the interpreting audience's social and cultural context.
Week 9: How Media Changes
Gitelman's argument that media are historically contingent, culturally constructed, and reciprocally shaped by society challenges simplistic technological determinism. The tension between media becoming seamlessly "invisible" (more accessible, but less critically examined) and remaining critically visible is illustrated through Black Mirror: Bandersnatch's convergence of television narrative with interactive, choose-your-own-adventure gaming mechanics.
Week 10: Authenticity and Media
Walter Benjamin's concept of "aura" -- the unique, unreproducible presence of an original artwork -- is applied to Van Gogh's Starry Night, considered alongside whether digital media can possess a comparable aura despite the ease of reproduction and dissemination reducing perceived uniqueness. Modernism's historical emergence as a break from traditional artistic forms, its contemporaneous criticism (fears of alienation and devalued authenticity), and its continuing influence on art, architecture, and literature are also discussed.
Week 11: Superficiality and Pop Culture
This section addresses postmodernism and popular culture's relationship to surface-level cultural engagement, drawing on the week's assigned reading on postmodernism and popular culture.
References
O'Shaughnessy, M., & Stadler, J. (2016). Media and society (6th ed.). Oxford University Press. Devereux, E. (2014). Understanding the media (3rd ed.). Sage. National Association of Independent Schools. (2018). Kimberle Crenshaw on intersectionality [Video]. van Krieken, R. (2018). Celebrity society (2nd ed.). Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). Greenwood. van Krieken, R., Habibis, D., Smith, P., Hutchins, B., Haralambos, M., & Holborn, M. (2014). Sociology: Themes and perspectives (5th Australian ed.). Pearson. Gitelman, L. (2008). Introduction: Media as historical subjects. In Always already new: Media, history, and the data of culture (pp. 1-22). MIT Press. Benjamin, W. (2005/1936). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (A. Bluden, Trans.). UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. McRobbie, A. (2003). Introduction. In Postmodernism and popular culture (pp. 1-10). Routledge.