Unit convenor and teaching staff |
Unit convenor and teaching staff
Senior Lecturer
Theresa Senft
Contact via email
Thursdays 12-1 pm
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Credit points |
Credit points
3
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Prerequisites |
Prerequisites
39cp at 100 level or above
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Corequisites |
Corequisites
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Co-badged status |
Co-badged status
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Unit description |
Unit description
This unit will offer students an understanding of the key role social media now plays in media practice and culture. The ways in which social media impact and influence public debate will be explored. The unit will involve students in integrating existing and emerging online platforms and technologies into media practice. Students will analyse the way media organisations, corporations and individuals utilise social media to produce narratives and participate in public discourse. They will also examine the way social and online media have opened up new possibilities for building audiences and communities using a wide variety of social media platform and practices.
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Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
Classes and tutorials begin Week 1. Students will be expected to have read material assigned for Week 1 before arriving to tutorials. Be aware that for this class, viewing of lectures is mandatory, as is your physical attendance in tutorials. Your participation mark (30% of your total grade for this class) will be assessed through a combination of tutorial attendance, participation in discussions and group work, and your timely submissions of draft and other materials online prior to tutorials.
All assessment submissions are online via Turnitin. No paper or emailed submissions will be accepted. See individual assessment instructions for details.
You will need to supply appropriate documentation to your unit convenor for any missed tutorial or lack of pre-tutorial materials (if less than three consecutive days). You will need to apply for Special Consideration to cover any absences more than three consecutive days.
The MMCCS Session Re-mark Application can be found here: http://www.mq.edu.au/pubstatic/public/download/?id=167914
Name | Weighting | Hurdle | Due |
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Class participation | 30% | No | Week 1 and thereafter |
Walk-through Project | 20% | No | week 5 |
Case Study/News Item Analysis | 25% | No | Week 9 |
Comparative Project | 25% | No | Week 12 |
Due: Week 1 and thereafter
Weighting: 30%
Our tutorials begin Week 1. They are mandatory sessions where we discuss assigned readings and case studies, engage in interactive exercises and workshop draft versions of essays together.
Assessment Criteria
Your grade for this class will calculated out of 100 points, and at 30%, tutorial participation will constitute the largest part of that. There will be 12 mandatory tutorials this semester (for the final class, there will be optional office hour visits in lieu of tutorials) In each tutorial, participation will be measured using a 3 point system:
You may be the sort of student who is thinking, "Wait--If my participation mark this semester will calculated at 30 points, and I have the possibility to earn 36 points for tutorial participation, isn't something off, here? The answer to that question is "yes." I've designed this system so that you need to earn a minimum of 30 points of of 36 to get a perfect participation grade.
This system allows you 2 full absences from tutorials with nothing submitted, no questions asked. Personally, I wouldn't use up my 2 days on absences, because there are also times where your body is present, but that's about it. If you turn up for tutorial without having submitted materials in advance of class, you'll get 1 point for attendance, but be penalized by 1 point for not being prepared. If we are working on peer edits that day and you can't participate because you have nothing for someone else to read, that's another 1 point gone for the day on the "engagement" side of things. See how this works?
Now that we've covered the negative aspects of this system, let's talk about the positive one: any points collected beyond your initial 30 will be extra credit to put toward your other assessment scores. The reasoning for this is as follows: our tutorials will include a fair amount of writing workshops designed to help you with your longer assessments. If you show up to tutorials prepared, and participate in the tutorials to the best of your ability, you will almost certainly fare better on your assessments than students who do not do these things.
Since our system doesn't allow for re-writes after an assessment mark is submitted, tutorial "extra credit" is my way of making sure you get the best mark you can by practicing your writing and getting peer edits during class time.
Due: week 5
Weighting: 20%
This exercise is designed to get you to think about social media in terms of technological environments that almost always reference visuality in some way. Using a traditional or creative format, you are going to create a project that uses the “walk through method” (detailed at length in class) to consider how visibility and invisibility impact your capacity to access, navigate, search, explore, express, create and communicate through a platform, app or technology of your choosing.
Format
Your assignment can take one of three formats:
Submission procedures:
Assessment criteria:
Grading Note:
Assessment standards in this unit align with the University's grade descriptors, available at: https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policies/assessment
Due: Week 9
Weighting: 25%
This assignment has been designed to help assess your knowledge of and comfort level with some of the concepts we’ve covered class to date. During our tutorials, we will work together to keep a running list of theories and arguments introduced during lectures and in readings. For this assignment, you will evaluate a few items on the list (you will pick which ones), using a case study or news item of your own choosing. In tutorials, we’ll discuss places you might want to look for appropriate case studies and news items, as well as what makes for a compelling choice in terms of the focus of our class.
Format
Your assignment can take one of three formats:
Necessary Elements
Submitting this assessment
Assessment Criteria:
Note: Assessment standards in this unit align with the University's grade descriptors, available at: https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policies/assessment
Due: Week 12
Weighting: 25%
This assignment has been designed to assess your comfort level with the “theme, question, lens, method, presentation” approach to social media studies, which we will discuss at length in class. Using a traditional or creative format, you will be asked to compare two social media related events, phenomena, news developments, or user experiences. The research question, methodology and theoretical lenses for this project will be yours to choose, provided they reflect in some way on our class. The cases/stories/phenomena under comparison will also be yours to choose, with final approval from Terri. There is a bit of a trick to picking things that yield interesting results when compared, which is something we’ll be discussing at length in tutorials.
Format
Your assignment can take one of three formats:
Necessary Elements
Submitting
Assessment:
Start of classes and tutorials
Delivery of unit
Readings and Other Media
Laptop Policy
Other Technology Matters
This is a class devoted to social media culture: the personal, social, political and economic ramifications of living in a time dominated by social media. As you might expect from our class title, we will spend a substantial amount of time thinking about life online in terms of networked images.
This can put us in contentious territory. If it is true that the internet is a trash fire, networked images provide a fair amount of its garbage, and most of its gasoline. Be they 'stupid' reaction GIFs, 'narcissistic' selfies, 'confusing' memes, 'serious' displays of evidence (as in photographed protests) or 'horrifying' displays of depravity (as in live-streamed executions), networked images tend to figure heavily into debates about what social media 'has done' to notions of identity, community, creativity, privacy, news, ethics, and pleasure around the world.
In this class, we will consider some of these debates, but we will also consider how the hyper-visibility of digital images contrasts with the opaqueness and transparency of platforms, apps, and technologies. This matters, because at the platform level, social media includes nearly every site or app we access each day. Everyone knows social networking services like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat "count" as social media. But we should also be thinking in terms of knowledge-building platforms like Wikipedia, shopping platforms like Amazon, travel platforms like TripAdvisor, streaming platforms like Spotify, Netflix , and Twitch, fitness platforms like FitBit, plagiarism detection platforms like TurnitIn, gaming platforms like XBox Live, baby monitoring platforms....the list goes on.
We should also be aware that even platforms that aren't explicitly social can be driven by technologies that create socially networked effects. We've probably all heard of algorithmic manipulation on social networking sites like Facebook with "personally designed news feeds," but the most notorious company deploying algorithmic "recipes" to sort, rank and target its users is actually Google. Companies like Uber that gather our geographical data are also key players in the tracing and tracking game. Even if you never go online at all, your phone is already designed to work like a drone, collecting and reporting your movement patterns back to the companies that built them (and sometimes to the governments where they are located.)
The class will take up these issues, framing them in terms of what can be seen, known, enforced, and resisted in social media culture. Throughout, we'll continue to return to the question: What are the best ways to learn, advocate, create, love and protect ourselves in social media culture, when both visibility and invisibility offer promise and threat?
WEEKLY CLASS BREAKDOWN WITH READINGS AND CASE STUDIES
CLASS 1: SEEING SOCIAL MEDIA
Required Reading:
To Discuss:
CLASS 2: SEEING WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT
Required Reading:
To Discuss:
CLASS 3: SEEING CONNECTION & CONNECTIVITY
Required Reading:
To Discuss:
WEEK 4: SEEING OURSELVES & OTHERS
Required Reading:
To Discuss:
WEEK 5: SEEING PLATFORMS & USERS
Required Reading:
To Discuss:
WEEK 6: SEEING SPEECH
Required Reading:
For Discussion:
WEEK 7: SEEING PANIC
Required Reading:
To Discuss:
WEEK 8: SEEING POLITICS
Required Reading (Choose One):
To Discuss:
WEEK 9: SEEING WORK
Required Reading:
To Discuss:
WEEK 10: SEEING SURVEILLANCE
Required Reading: (Pick One)
To Discuss
WEEK 11: SEEING STRATEGIES: HYPER-VISIBILITY
Required Reading (Choose One)
To Discuss:
WEEK 12: SEEING STRATEGIES: INVISIBLITY
Required Reading (Choose One)
To Discuss:
Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central (https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policy-central). Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:
Undergraduate students seeking more policy resources can visit the Student Policy Gateway (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/student-policy-gateway). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.
If you would like to see all the policies relevant to Learning and Teaching visit Policy Central (https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policy-central).
Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/study/getting-started/student-conduct
Results shown in iLearn, or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit ask.mq.edu.au.
ATTENDANCE POLICIES
Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/
Learning Skills (mq.edu.au/learningskills) provides academic writing resources and study strategies to improve your marks and take control of your study.
Students with a disability are encouraged to contact the Disability Service who can provide appropriate help with any issues that arise during their studies.
For all student enquiries, visit Student Connect at ask.mq.edu.au
For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/information_technology/help/.
When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.
Our graduates will also be capable of creative thinking and of creating knowledge. They will be imaginative and open to experience and capable of innovation at work and in the community. We want them to be engaged in applying their critical, creative thinking.
This graduate capability is supported by:
We want our graduates to have emotional intelligence and sound interpersonal skills and to demonstrate discernment and common sense in their professional and personal judgement. They will exercise initiative as needed. They will be capable of risk assessment, and be able to handle ambiguity and complexity, enabling them to be adaptable in diverse and changing environments.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Our graduates will have enquiring minds and a literate curiosity which will lead them to pursue knowledge for its own sake. They will continue to pursue learning in their careers and as they participate in the world. They will be capable of reflecting on their experiences and relationships with others and the environment, learning from them, and growing - personally, professionally and socially.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Our graduates will take with them the intellectual development, depth and breadth of knowledge, scholarly understanding, and specific subject content in their chosen fields to make them competent and confident in their subject or profession. They will be able to demonstrate, where relevant, professional technical competence and meet professional standards. They will be able to articulate the structure of knowledge of their discipline, be able to adapt discipline-specific knowledge to novel situations, and be able to contribute from their discipline to inter-disciplinary solutions to problems.
This graduate capability is supported by:
We want our graduates to be capable of reasoning, questioning and analysing, and to integrate and synthesise learning and knowledge from a range of sources and environments; to be able to critique constraints, assumptions and limitations; to be able to think independently and systemically in relation to scholarly activity, in the workplace, and in the world. We want them to have a level of scientific and information technology literacy.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Our graduates should be capable of researching; of analysing, and interpreting and assessing data and information in various forms; of drawing connections across fields of knowledge; and they should be able to relate their knowledge to complex situations at work or in the world, in order to diagnose and solve problems. We want them to have the confidence to take the initiative in doing so, within an awareness of their own limitations.
This graduate capability is supported by:
We want to develop in our students the ability to communicate and convey their views in forms effective with different audiences. We want our graduates to take with them the capability to read, listen, question, gather and evaluate information resources in a variety of formats, assess, write clearly, speak effectively, and to use visual communication and communication technologies as appropriate.
This graduate capability is supported by:
As local citizens our graduates will be aware of indigenous perspectives and of the nation's historical context. They will be engaged with the challenges of contemporary society and with knowledge and ideas. We want our graduates to have respect for diversity, to be open-minded, sensitive to others and inclusive, and to be open to other cultures and perspectives: they should have a level of cultural literacy. Our graduates should be aware of disadvantage and social justice, and be willing to participate to help create a wiser and better society.
This graduate capability is supported by:
We want our graduates to be aware of and have respect for self and others; to be able to work with others as a leader and a team player; to have a sense of connectedness with others and country; and to have a sense of mutual obligation. Our graduates should be informed and active participants in moving society towards sustainability.
This graduate capability is supported by:
Date | Description |
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20/02/2018 | Added parameters for participation grades, using the phrase "online forum" where I originally had the word "Slack" (waiting for faculty approval on waiver to use Slack.) |