New Media in Contemporary Culture 3301-KB2420
"New Media in Contemporary Culture" is an undergraduate course serving as an introduction to the media phenomena in which all of us, more or less actively, participate. The course's objective is to indicate and discuss the diversity and complexity of contemporary media. A special attention is paid to their features and forms as well as social and cultural backgrounds. In addition, the notions of reception and technological determination, essential for understanding the media today, will be discussed.
During the course, the Students study various definitions of media and learn how to recognise and analyse constitutive components of selected media products (messages). At the same time, selected relevant elements of social semiotics, cultural studies, media studies, narrative theory and ludology will be introduced.
A range of subjects and groups of related terms:
1. Traditional media vs “new media”; the "medium"
2. Media and modalities (semioticity); cyberculture
3. Games - immersion and interactivity
4. TV - remediation and seriality
5. Film - transmediality and fandom
6. Social media - "small stories" & "shared stories", hybridity and platformisation
7. Internet - online communication
8. Mobile media - haptics
9. Digital literature - hypertext and ludoliterariness
10. Comic book and graphic book - multimodality
Type of course
Mode
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
In class discussions students acquire skills of expressing their thoughts in a clear, coherent, logical and precise manner, with the use of language which is correct grammatically, lexically and phonetically.
The students:
• know the main new media phenomena in the online environment;
• recognise semiotic components constituting specific media and media
products;
• know how to analyse specific media messages on their own;
• know how to expand their understanding of the socio-cultural complexity of a specific medium and products.
Education at language level B2+
Assessment criteria
• regular homework assignments (written and oral)
• in- and out-of-class active participation (forum discussions)
• individual and group work
Evaluation criteria (4): - depth of research; - extent of knowledge; - familiarity with terminology; - active participation and creativity
The final grade is an average of all work done throughout the semester.
Bibliography
• Dickey, Lew, The New Modern Media: Remaking Media for a Mobile Culture, Tourbillon, Modern Luxury, 2016.
• Durham, Meenakshi Gigi, Dougles M. Kellner (eds.). Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. 2nd edition, Wiley Blackwell, 2012.
• Freeman, Matthew, Renira Gambarato (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia, London and New York, Routledge, 2018.
• Goggin, Gerard, Larissa Hjorth (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media. London and New York, Routledge, 2014.
• Kellner, Douglas M., Media Culture. London and New York, Routledge, 2020.
• Kyong Chun, Wendy Hui (ed.). New Media, Old Media. 2nd edition, new York and London, Routledge, 2016.
• Levinson, Paul. New New Media. Pearson, 2016.
• Lister, Martin, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly. New Media. A Critical Introduction. London and New York, Routledge, 2009.
• Manovich, Lev, The Language of New Media, MIT Press, 2001.
• McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man. MIT Press 1994.
• Ouellette, Laurie, Jonathan Gray (eds.). Keywords for Media Studies. New York, NYU Press 2017.
• Valdivia, Angharad N. (ed.). A Companion to Media Studies. Malden, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing 2003.
• Van Loon, Joost. Media Technology. Critical Perspectives. Berkshire, Open University Press, 2008.
• Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, Nick Montfort (eds.). The New Media Reader. Massachusetts, MIT Press 2003.
• White, Andrew, Digital Media and Society. Houndsmills, Palgrave, 2014.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: