Module: MCO4110-20 - Communications for Change

Level: 4

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Rebecca Feasey

Module Tutor Contact Details: R.Feasey@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

Communications for Change is designed to enable students to think and act as socially engaged media activists. The module considers further challenges surrounding inequality and media production, focusing in particular on the difficulty of finding an audience in today’s online and increasingly fragmented media environment. Students will be asked to consider how they can challenge prevalent issues such as inequalities depicted in advertising, algorithmic bias on social media, power imbalances within the media industries, and actively communicate a change.

To support this thinking, the module introduces students to key practices for understanding and enabling media communications for change, including culture jamming, remix culture, and the use of emerging technologies. More broadly, students will explore the world of media activism, exploring inspiring case studies of grassroots and community-driven campaigns aiming to provoke and support social change.

Learning video editing skills, students will work towards the production of their own remix video, communicating change via audio-visual techniques (Research Portfolio 100%).

2.Outline syllabus

● Module Introduction: Communications for Change

● Conducting Audience Research: Methods, Challenges and Implications.

● Contemporary Media Activism: Inspiring and Embodying Positive Social Change

● Finding Media Audiences I: Advertising & Diversity

● Finding Media Audiences II: DIY Communications and Zines

● Finding Media Audiences III: Walking Arts and Privilege

● Finding Media Audiences IV: Apps & Discoverability

● Communications for Change I: Harnessing Remix Culture

● Producing Remix Videos

● Student Showcase

3.Teaching and learning activities

Students will be introduced to challenges surrounding finding audiences within today’s online, increasingly fragmented media environment, building directly on the themes of inequality explored in the Thinking Media module. Students will examine case studies of advertising and privilege, app creation and the challenge of discoverability, and the continuing difficulty for media producers like musicians to secure paid work. The module will then move on to identify traditional and emerging approaches to media activism and communications for change. These include practices of culture jamming, remix culture, and the role of emerging technologies like augmented reality in amplifying print media industries such as publishing.

Lectures will be used to introduce these practices, and workshops will be used as spaces for debate and hands-on production skills. Technical skills training will centre on video editing techniques, equipping students with the skills to produce a remix video that communicates their research to a defined audience.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Research Portfolio (including Remix Video)

• % Weighting: 100%