Understanding media
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| 6 Tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) | |
| Examination | No residential school |
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Summary
The communications media (newspapers, photography, radio, film, television, popular music, advertising and the internet, to name only a few) have profoundly transformed the way we live. The main aim of this course is to equip you with a robust understanding of the main issues facing media businesses, governments, and ourselves, as consumers of the media and citizens living in societies saturated by media messages. This understanding is grounded in detailed and rigorous media analysis. A wide variety of media is used on the course, including DVD-ROM, audio CDs, DVD, the web, textbooks and study guides.
Course content
No contemporary study of the arts or society would be complete without serious consideration of the media. This course will help you to do this, by introducing you to different ways of analysing and understanding the media.
Understanding media is organised into five blocks which are complemented by audio CDs and DVDs. Block 1 gives a taster of the whole course, then each of Blocks 2–5 focuses on a particular aspect of the media – notably audiences, production, content, regulation, markets and technologies.
Block 1, Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity, introduces you to the study of the media by looking at the phenomenon of celebrity. Celebrity provides a way in to understanding debates about ‘dumbing down’ and cultural decline in modern societies. This block examines these debates and introduces three approaches to media. These are:
- media audiences: how the media are experienced and understood by those who watch, read, and hear them
- media production: the creation and distribution of the media
- media texts: the media (such as television programmes, newspaper and magazine articles, stories, websites, songs and films) that we watch, read, listen to and have in the background.
These approaches are then explored in more detail in the next three blocks.
Block 2, Media Audiences, provides an account of how research on media audiences helps us understand media power and influence. It includes how the media have affected our senses, (notably the way we see and hear) and how the media has affected democracy - showing how the introduction of new media technologies in India and Israel has affected those societies. We look at research that studies in detail how people respond to, and talk about, television in a range of cultural contexts. However, the media are constantly changing, and we examine how new genres (such as reality TV) and new technologies (such as webcams) are forcing researchers to rethink our understanding of how media audiences react.
Block 3, Media Production, goes behind the scenes of the media industries, to examine how media texts come to us. Media production is dominated by large corporations, which span much of the globe, many of them owned by powerful moguls such as Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi. We ask whether this matters. But we also look in depth at studies of the everyday workings of media organisations, from war and crime reporting to rap; at how these organisations try to find out what their audiences want; and at what it’s like to work in the media where many media workers are freelance, part-time and ‘casual’.
Block 4 introduces you to analysing media texts – to ways in which we can look in-depth at television programmes, newspapers, films and so on, and understand how they communicate with their audiences. The techniques of analysis include the study of the language used by the media, how media products are made in different types or genres and the pleasures and experiences associated with different genres (including romantic comedy, melodrama and others). You’ll also consider how media texts tell their stories and question how they ‘represent’ the world, including whether or not they tell ‘the truth’. This block encourages you to carry out your own analysis through activities based on an interactive DVD-ROM that helps you see how different approaches work on particular example texts.
Block 5, Media Technologies, Markets and Regulation, closes the main part of the course, by looking at the question of change, in particular at the relationship between changing media technologies and changing societies. To what extent do media technologies change our world? To what extent do changes in the world affect the media? What are the economic features of the media? What role does, and might, the state play with regard to the media? This block investigates these questions through case studies of a number of technological developments and effects, including debates about:
- new communication technologies – television, video, DVD and the internet
- the effect on the English language (and on democracy) of the introduction of printing (an old technology that once was new)
- the media’s impact on domestic and family relationships
- censorship and press freedom
- public service broadcasting.
A final week summarises how the course has dealt with three key themes which run through the course as a whole. They are: power; change and continuity; and knowledge, values and beliefs. These themes provide ways in to developing a fuller understanding of the media in the modern world. This course review also helps you to prepare for the exam.
You will learn
By the end of the course you should know more about the media’s role in society and key debates and theoretical approaches relevant to understanding the media. And you should also have developed your skills in:
- reading, understanding and summarising academic writing
- using evidence
- comparing and contrasting theories
- textual analysis
- evaluation of theories and evidence
- organising and expressing your own thoughts in an organised way.
Vocational relevance
The media are an increasingly important source of employment in most advanced industrial societies. An understanding of how the media operate is vital across all institutions and businesses in society. Although the course offers no direct experience of making television programmes, etc., and therefore will not ‘train’ you for working in the media, it introduces skills which are of great relevance to understanding how communication works, and which are therefore transferable to a whole range of work situations, including the media industries themselves, and most businesses, non-governmental organisations and public sector institutions. The course also builds a strong basis of more vocationally-oriented skills that are transferable to the job market: clarity of written communication; critical thinking; ability to analyse; reflect on and present arguments, evidence and theories; problem-solving; evaluating issues; time management; self-motivation and basic numerical skills.
Entry
This is a Level 2 course. You need to feel comfortable about embarking on a Level 2 course, either by having previous study of a Level 1 course with the OU or from equivalent work at another university. You should also have an interest in the media and contemporary culture, and in understanding more about them.
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.
Qualifications
DA204 is an optional course in our
- BA (Honours) Humanities (B03)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Social Sciences (B06)
- Diploma of Higher Education in Social Sciences (E50)
It can also count towards most of our other degrees at bachelors level, where it is equally appropriate to a BA or BSc. We advise you to refer to the relevant qualification descriptions for information on the circumstances in which this course can count towards these qualifications because from time to time the structure and requirements may change.
If you have a disability or additional requirement
All students, including students with disabilities, will be able to achieve the course specified learning outcomes using course materials or their alternative formats. However students need to be aware that visual and aural interactions are essential to understanding how media texts create meaning, and how they are produced and consumed. Students will need to be able to work with audio-visual materials. They will acquire a broad range of skills in the analysis of audio-visual materials as part of the learning experience that the course provides.
The course materials are available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Some Adobe PDF components may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader and musical notation and mathematical, scientific, and foreign language materials may be particularly difficult to read in this way. Other alternative formats of the course materials may be available in the future. Our Services for disabled students website has the latest information about availability.
The course materials have been produced in line with Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) guidelines with regard to the legibility of print, colour contrast and illustrative material. Teaching texts are in a form that allows electronic printing, tactile formats and audio presentation. We will, for example, provide subtitles and descriptive transcripts of all DVD materials, but visually impaired students may need a sighted helper to assist them on this aspect of the course. The books are available in a comb-bound format.
Some parts of the course will prove to be more challenging than others, especially for students with visual or auditory impairments. The course makes significant use of still and moving images in Block 4 especially, which focuses on the analysis of media texts. Block 4 provides an accompanying DVD. Students are asked to carry out a series of analytical activities around examples taken from television, film, radio and print media. The skills of textual analysis cannot be developed as fully or as effectively without this kind of image-based work. Although at certain junctures in the course sound based exercises may be provided as an alternative, severely visually impaired students will be at a disadvantage in Block 4.
If you are a new student, or new to courses using a computer or the internet, you will need to inform us of your particular needs as soon as possible, as some of our support services may take several weeks to arrange. Details of how to do this and our range of support services are described in our booklet Meeting Your Needs which you can download or request from our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.
You can also find information about accessible course materials, financial support and the Disabled Students' Allowance, equipment and other services, on our Services for disabled students website. It also includes our contact details for advice and support both before you register and while you are studying.
Course materials
What's included
Course books, audio-CDs, study guides, a dedicated course website, an easy-to-use interactive DVD-ROM and two DVDs containing a feature film, a range of examples of television programming, newspaper pages and a radio extract.
You will need
A television with a DVD player is strongly recommended.
Computing requirements
This course includes online computer activities – you can access these using a web browser that can play Flash and Shockwave. Some of your course software will be provided on disk.
You will need internet access and a computer. If you have purchased a new Windows computer since 2002 it should meet your course computing requirements. Check our Technical Requirements section if your computer is older than this or is otherwise unusual. Please note that you can use an Apple Mac or Linux computer if you can run Windows using Boot Camp or similar.
Teaching and assessment
Support from your tutor
You will have a tutor who will help you with the course material and mark and comment on your written work, and whom you can ask for advice and guidance. We also offer group tutorials or day-schools that you are encouraged, but not obliged, to attend. Where your tutorials are held will depend on the distribution of students taking the course.
Contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.
Assessment
The assessment details for this course can be found in the facts box above.
You will be expected to submit your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) online through the eTMA system unless there are some difficulties which prevent you from doing so. In these circumstances, you must negotiate with your tutor to get their agreement to submit your assignment on paper.
The TMAs include the chance to carry out your analysis of media texts. Assessment is an essential part of the teaching, so you are expected to complete it all. However, if you unavoidably miss or do badly in an assignment some courses allow you a ‘substitution score’. You will be given more detailed information when you begin the course.
Students also studied
Students who studied this course also studied at some time:
Future availability
The details given here are for the course that starts in January 2010 when it will be available for the last time.
How to register
To register a place on this course return to the top of the page and use the Click to register button. For more information and advice about registration see OU Study Explained.
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