NMC554 : New media culture / College of Creative Arts

This course introduces the student to become familiar to the historical, economic, social or behavioural context of the technologies they use every day and take for granted. The students will be able to think critically about new media – where they come from, how they are used, who benefits and who is disadvantaged by the ways that systems are configured and run. Students can understand more about their own communication and the devices they use to do it, as well as give them a base of knowledge to help frame their future choices and uses of media. This course lets the student sees how new media facilitate community-building and traces the regulatory framework that is intended to empower and protect the public as they encounter new media, especially the Internet. Students will also learn how the new media differ from mass media in terms of the recombinant and networked ways they develop, and their ubiquitous and interactive consequences. The course shows how communication studies should shift its primary focus from mass media to the mediation process itself.