Course syllabus

Lecturer: Bruce Curtis

Office: HSB 910

Lectures: Wednesday, 3-5

Office Hours: Monday, 2-4.

 

If you need to see me outside office hours, please email me in advance. I am happy to meet with you. Email: b.curtis@auckland.ac.nz.

 

Outline

 

Week 1. Spoiler and a survey

 

Week 2. Culture industry

Adorno, Theodore. 1991. “Culture industry reconsidered”. In The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture, London: Routledge. 85-92.

 

'The Frankfurt School'-In Our Time BBC Radio 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwqqA3nHiI

 

Week 3. The medium is the message

McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. ‘The medium is the message’. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge. 7-23

 

Perry, Nick. 2004. Perry, Ringing the changes: the cultural meanings of the telephone, in Goode, Luke, and Zuberi, Nabeel., Media Studies in Aotearoa New Zealand, Pearson Education: Auckland: 157-167.

 

Week 4. Propaganda model

Herman, Edward and Chomsky, Noam. 2002. ‘A Propaganda Model’. In Manufacturing Consent: A Propaganda Model. New York: Pantheon Books. 1-35.

 

Herman, Edward S. "The propaganda model: A retrospective." Journalism Studies 1.1 (2000): 101-112.

 

Rampton, Sheldon. 2007. Has the Internet Changed the Propaganda Model?.  Available from http://www.prwatch.org/node/6068.

 

Week 5. Semiotics

Barthes, R. 1957/1972. Myth Today, Annette Lavers (tr.), Mythologies, Hill and Wang: New York: 109–137.

 

Curtis, B. and Curtis, C. 2011. Semiotic Analysis – Studying Signs and Meanings, Social Research: A Practical Introduction, Sage, London: 242-262.

 

Strinati, Dominic. 2004. “Structuralism and Semiology”. In An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. London: Routledge. 78-114.

 

Week 6. CLASS TEST

 

Week 7. Decoding, hyper reality, and poaching: the old ‘new’

 

Hall, Stuart [1973] 1980. “Encoding/decoding”. In Culture, Media, Language eds Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., and Willis, P. London: Hutchinson. 128-38.

 

Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. “The Precession of Simulacra”. In Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, ed John Story. New York: Harvester. 361-368.

 

Baudrillard, Jean. 1991. “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place”. In The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Trans. Paul Paton.  Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 23-28

 

De Certeau, Michel. 1984. “Reading as Poaching”. In The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkley: The University of California Press. 165-176.

 

Jenkins, Henry. 1992. ‘“Strangers No More, We Sing”: Filking and the Social Construction of the Science Fiction Fan Community’. In The Adoring Audience: fan culture and popular media, ed Lisa A Lewis. London ; New York : Routledge. 208-236.

 

Turkle, Sherry. "Virtuality and its discontents searching for community in cyberspace." (1996).

 

Week 8. Newer theorising

Jenkins, Henry. 2004. ‘The cultural logic of media convergence’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1): 33-43.

 

Lessig, Lawrence. 2005. “Introduction”. In Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. Available from http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-2.html [Accessed 26th Feb 2016]

Murthy, Dhiraj. 2012. Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social

Media: Theorizing Twitter. Sociology, 46(6): 1059 –1073

 

Week 9. Media ownership: is it still important?

 

Bagdikian, Ben H. 2004. Common media for an uncommon nation, in The new media monopoly, Boston: Beacon Press. 2004: 1-26.

 

Myllylahti, Merja. 2016. The New Zealand media ownership report

AUT University. Auckland, N.Z. : Auckland University of Technology, available at http://www.aut.ac.nz/study-at-aut/study-areas/communications/research/journalism,-media-and-democracy-research-centre/journalists-and-projects/new-zealand-media-ownership-report

 

Week 10. Prosumer or Uber everything?

 

Ritzer, G. ; Jurgenson, N. 2010. Production, Consumption, Prosumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital 'prosumer', Journal of Consumer Culture, March 2010, Vol.10(1), pp.13-36

 

Mastrorillo, Elisa. 2016. Getting Taken for a Ride by Uber Technologies

Incorporated Sociological Imagination, Western’s Undergraduate Sociology Student Journal, 5(1), Article 4, Available at http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=si

 

 

Week 11. Conspiracy theories in a hyper-real world

 

Week 12. Retrospect

 

Assessment

 

Sociology 318

 

SOCIOL318 is based on 100% course work. There is no end of year examination, instead there is a take home test which must be returned on the last day of lectures. There are THREE pieces of assessment in this course.

 

In-Class Test: Wednesday, 12 April 2017.

 

Research Essay: Due: 4pm, Friday, 26 May 2017. (2,000 words)

 

There are two somewhat conflicting approaches to studying the media. One is pessimistic, the other optimistic. The pessimists tend focus on notions of a ‘culture industry’ and ‘cultural dupe’ developed by the Frankfurt School, or of monopoly control and ‘the propaganda model’ (if they are non-Marxists). The optimists tend to be technophiles, they are excited by the possibilities of new technologies to make the world a better place. McLuhan was a technophile / technological determinist. Which are you and why? As a resident of New Zealand do you see ‘new’ media making life more creative and democratic? Or do you see the opposite? Or is it more complicated than that? Substantiate your arguments using the course readings and other resources you have located. Remember to be excellent in your referencing.

 

Take home test: Due: 4pm, Friday 9 June 2017. (3,000 words).

 

 

Notes

1. I don’t use Turnitin in this course.
2. All written material must follow the University of Auckland Referencing Style. http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subject-guides/ref/uoa.htm.
3. All assignments need to be handed in with the appropriate cover sheet, downloaded from Canvas.
4. EXTENSIONS WILL ONLY BE GRANTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH UNIVERSITY POLICY. MEDICAL AND/OR COUNSELLING CERTIFICATES MUST BE PROVIDED. Late assignments will have marks deducted (2.5% per day), and assignments will not be accepted on any topic after the assignments for that topic have been returned (10 working days). Extensions will be given to students who have valid reasons. REMEMBER, THE SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE APPARENT LOSS OF ASSIGNMENTS. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS KEEP COPIES OF ASSIGNMENTS. However, I can’t grant any extensions beyond the last day of lecturing. No one can. If someone tells you different, they are wrong.