IMPORTANT ASSESSMENT NOTICE: 

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of ‘0’ (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.55pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue. This late penalty will apply to written reports and recordings only. Late submission of time sensitive tasks (such as tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, scheduled practical assessments/labs will be addressed by the unit convenor in a Special consideration application.

 

Final essay to be electronically submitted via Turnitin.

NB: In your final essay, do not write on the same topic that you used for your tutorial presentation.

Final Essay

Assessment Type 1: Essay

Indicative Time on Task 2: 54 hours

Due: 03/11/2023 11.55pm

Weighting: 60%

A formal essay that fulfils the conventions of the academic genre, including critical address of key issues, analytical argumentation and buttressing of all assertions with relevant evidence. Refer to iLearn for further information.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• research and evaluative the historical, political and technological forces that have been

constitutive in the emergence of forensic media.

• apply critical and analytical skills in the examination and evaluation of the key concepts

and arguments that underpin the use of forensic media across different platforms and

news organisations.

• analyse local and international perspectives on forensic media.

• apply critical argumentation skills in order to articulate and evidence different viewpoints

on the social, geopolitical and ethical uses of forensic media.

• communication the key ideas, issues and disciplinary debates on the use of forensic

media across diverse platforms and contexts.

• apply ethical and socially responsible skills that demonstrate the ability to analyse and reflect on the ethical implications generated by the uses of forensic media in their respective geopolitical contexts.

 

Tutorial Presentation

Assessment Type 1: Presentation

Indicative Time on Task 2: 44 hours

Due: On the day of the scheduled presentation

Weighting: 40%

A task that demonstrates a student’s disciplinary knowledge and skills through verbal communication to the class.

For your tutorial presentation you are required to:

1. Select a topic from the tutorial schedule of topics and readings.

2. Identify the keys issues and arguments as outlined in the lecture and relevant readings.

3. Evidence and illustrate your presentation of key issues and arguments with relevant audio-visual material, e.g., videos, images, interviews, case studies and so on.

4. In the course of your presentation, you must pose to the class probing questions on the topic's key issues in order to generate engaged discussion.

5. Keep your presentation to 15 minutes maximum time. There is no submission of print material to this assessment task. You will be assessed solely on your in-class presentation.

On successful completion you will be able to:

• research and evaluative the historical, political and technological forces that have been constitutive in the emergence of forensic media.

• apply critical and analytical skills in the examination and evaluation of the key concepts and arguments that underpin the use of forensic media across different platforms and news organisations.

• analyse local and international perspectives on forensic media.

• apply critical argumentation skills in order to articulate and evidence different viewpoints

on the social, geopolitical and ethical uses of forensic media.

• communication the key ideas, issues and disciplinary debates on the use of forensic

media across diverse platforms and contexts.

• apply ethical and socially responsible skills that demonstrate the ability to analyse and reflect on the ethical implications generated by the uses of forensic media in their respective geopolitical contexts.

If you need help with your assignment, please contact:

• the academic teaching staff in your unit for guidance in understanding or completing this type of assessment

• the Writing Centre for academic skills support.

Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation

All lectures and tutorials commence in Week 1 of semester.

This unit includes pre-recorded lectures and online and on-campus tutorials. Please see the timetable for further information

All lectures will be delivered electronically and will be recorded and made available at the ECHO 360 link on the unit's iLearn site.

An MMCC3031 Forensic Media Reader will be available online from the MQ Library. All required reading list titles will be available via ‘Unit Readings’ in

MultiSearch:http://multisearch.mq.edu.au/?course and via the Leganto link on the MMCC3031 iLearn site.

 

 

 

MMCC3031 FORENSIC MEDIA UNIT SCHEDULE

LECTURES

Week One: 26 July: Introduction to Forensics and Forensic Media

Week Two: 2 August: Forensic Art and Illustration

Week Three: 9 August: Forensic Drone Media

Week Four: 16 August: Forensic CCTV

Week Five: 23 August: Crime Scenes: Using Forensic Evidence in Nonfiction Writing

Week Six: 30 August: Forensic Media of Indigenous Deaths in Custody

Week Seven: 6 September: Forensic Media of Asylum Seeker and Refugee Deaths at the Border

RECESS: 11 September to 24 September

Week Eight: 25 September to 1 October: READING WEEK: NO CLASSES

Week Nine: Week 4 October: Forensic Genetics and the ‘CSI Effect’

Week Ten:  11 October: Geopolitics of Forensic Geospatial Technologies

Week Eleven: 18 October: Forensic Uses of Social Media

Week Twelve: 25 October: Forensic Biometrics

 

TUTORIALS AND READINGS

Week One (Commencing Tuesdays) 25 July: Introduction to Forensics and Forensic Media

Readings: Simon A. Cole 2013, ‘Forensic Culture as Epistemic Culture: The Sociology of Forensic Science,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological Biomedical Sciences, vol. 44, pp. 36-46.

Greg Siegel 2014, ‘Accidents and Forensics,’ in Greg Siegel, Forensic Media, Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 1-30.

 

Week Two: 1 August: Forensic Art and Illustration

Readings: Joseph Pugliese 2005, ‘”Demonstrative Evidence”: A Genealogy of the Racial Iconography of Forensic Art and Illustration,’ Law and Critique, vol. 15, pp. 287-320.

Sarah Cascone, “Textbooks Only Depict White Patients. So He Drew His Own Illustrations – and They Went Viral,” Artnet News, 7 December 2001, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/diversity-medical-illustrations-chidiebere-ibe-2045122?utm_content=from_www.artnet.com&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EU%20NEws%20AFternoon%2012%2F8%2F21&utm_term=EUR%20Daily%20Newsletter%20%5BAFTERNOON%5D

Shaila Dewan, “With George Floyd, a Raging Debate Over Bias in the Science of Death,” New York Times, April 14, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/us/george-floyd-death-forensic-science.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News.

 

Week Three: 8 August: Forensic Drone Media

Readings: James H. Hamilton, ‘Drone Journalism as Visual Aggregation: Toward a Critical History,’ Media and Communications, vol. 8, no. 3 (2020): 64-74.

John V. Pavlik, ‘Drones, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Journalism: Mapping Their Role in Immersive News Content,’ Media and Communications, vol. 8, no. 3 (2020): 137-146.

Pugliese, J, 2016, “Drone Casino Mimesis: Telewarfare and Civil Militarisation,” Journal of Sociology, 53.3: 500-521.

 

Week Four: 15 August: Forensic CCTV

Readings: Gary Edmond 2012, ‘Just Truth? Carefully Applying History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science to the Forensic Use of CCTV Images,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 44, pp. 80-91.

Katherine Biber 2006, ‘The Spectre of Crime: Photography, Law and Ethics,’ Social Semiotics, vol. 16, pp. 133-149.

 

Week Five: 22 August: Crime Scenes: Using Forensic Evidence in Nonfiction Writing

Readings:  Katherine Biber, Peter Doyle and Kate Rossmanith 2014, ‘Perving at Crime Scenes: Authenticity, Ethics, Aesthetics: A Conversation’, Griffith Law Review, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 804-814.

Dominick Dunne 1984, 'Justice', Vanity Fair, March, 

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1984/03/dunne198403

 

Week Six: 29 August: Forensics of Indigenous Deaths in Custody

Readings:  Amanda Porter, “Reflections on the Coronial Inquest of Ms Dhu,” Human Rights Defender, vol. 25, no. 3, November 2016.

Suvendrini Perera and Hannah McGlade, “Report of the Inquest into the Death of Ms Dhu (Perth, 16 December 2016.” In Indigenous Legal Judgments: Bringing Indigenous Voices into Judicial Decision Making, edited by Nicole Watson and Heather Douglas. London: Routledge.

Bronwyn Carlson, “Data Silence in the Settler Archives: Indigenous Femicide, Deathscapes and Social Media,” in Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese (eds.), Mapping Deathscapes: Digital Geographies of Racial and Border Violence, Routledge ebook @MQ Library, 2022, pp. 84-105.

Important supplementary material: “At a Lethal Intersection: The Killing of Ms Dhu,” available at the Deathscapes site, National Library of Australia: https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20201103065140/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/173410/20201103-1648/www.deathscapes.org/case-studies/ms-dhu/index.html

 

Week Seven: 5 September: Forensics of Asylum Seeker and Refugee Deaths at the Border

Readings: Tony Birch, “The Last Refuge of the ‘Un-Australian,’” in Timothy Neale, Crystal McKinnon, Eve Vincent (eds.), History, Power, Text: Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies, Sydney: UTS ePress, 2014,

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1w36pd7.17

Perera, Suvendrini and Joseph Pugliese, ‘Repetitions of Violence: On David Dungay’s and Fazel Chegeni Nejad’s Inquests,’ Overland, 28 August 2018, https://overland.org.au/2018/08/repetitions-of-violence-the-inquests-for-david-dungay-and-fazel-chegeni-nejad/

Maria Giannacopoulos 2019, ‘Debtscapes: Australia’s Constitutional Monopoly,’ borderlands e-journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 1-16.

Important supplementary material: “Villawood: A Suburban Deathscape in Plain Sight,” available at Deathscapes Project, National Library of Australia: https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20201103065140/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/173410/20201103-1648/www.deathscapes.org/case-studies/villawood/index.html

 

RECESS: 11 September to 24 September

Week Eight: 25 September to 1 October: READING WEEK: NO CLASSES

 

Week Nine: 3 October: Forensic Genetics and the ‘CSI Effect’

Readings: Barbara L. Ley, Natalie Jankowski and Paul R. Brewer 2012, ‘Investigating CSI: Portrayals of DNA Testing on a Forensic Crime Show and Their Potential Effect,’ Public Understanding of Science, vol. 21, pp. 51-67.

Simon A. Cole 2013, ‘A Surfeit of Science: The “CSI Effect” and the Media Appropriation of the Public Understanding of Science,’ Public Understanding of Science, vol. 0, pp. 1-17.

Pugliese, J, 1999, “Identity in Question: A Grammatology of DNA and Forensic Genetics,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law/Revue International de Sémiotique Juridique, 12.4: 414-444.

 

Week Ten: 10 October: Geopolitics of Forensic Geospatial Technologies

Readings: David Campbell 2007, ‘Geopolitics and Visuality: Sighting the Darfur Conflict,’ Political Geography, vol. 26, pp. 357-382.

Lisa Parks 2009, ‘Digging Into Google Earth: An Analysis of “Crisis in Darfur,”’ Geoforum, vol. 40, pp. 535-545.

Joseph Pugliese 2013, ‘Technologies of Extraterritorialisation, Statist Visuality and Irregular Migrants and Refugees,’ Griffith Law Review, vol. 22, pp. 571-597.

 

Week Eleven: 17 October: Forensic Uses of Social Media

Readings: Bronwyn Carlson and Jeff Berglund, “Introduction,” in B. Carlson and J. Berglund (eds.), Indigenous People Rise Up: The Global Ascendency of Social Media Activism, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021, pp. 1-13.

Stuart Middleton, Lee Middleton and Stefano Modaferi 2014, ‘Real-Time Crisis Mapping of Natural Disasters Using Social Media,’ Social Intelligence and Technology, March/April, pp. 9-17.

Patrick Meier 2011, ‘New Information Technologies and Their Impact on the Humanitarian Sector,’ International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 93, pp. 1239-1263.

Mathew Ingram 2014, ‘Social Media has Changed the Way that War Reporting Works – and That’s a Good Thing,’ Gigacom, 28 July, https://gigaom.com/2014/07/28/social-media-has-changed-the-way-that-war-reporting-works-and-thats-a-good-thing/.

 

Week Twelve: 24 October: Forensic Biometrics

Readings: Kelly Gates 2006, ‘Identifying the 9/11 “Faces of Terror,”’ Cultural Studies, vol. 20, pp. 417-440.

Joseph Pugliese 2005, ‘In Silico Race and the Heteronomy of Biometric Proxies: Biometrics in the Context of Civilian Life, Border Security and Counter-Terrorism Laws,’ Australian Feminist Law Journal, vol. 23, pp. 1-32.

Martin Kevorkian, “Integrated Circuits,” in Martin Kevorkian, Color Monitors: The Black Face of Technology in America, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006, pp. 74-114.

New readings have been included on the forensics of Indigenous deaths in custody.