Module: SOC6105-20 Media, Sociality and Everyday Life

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Patrick Turner

Module Tutor Contact Details: p.turner3@bathspa.ac.uk

1.Brief description and aims of module:

This module examines the use of various different media as forms of sociality in everyday life.  By paying close attention to kinds of sociality, community and modes of association contemporary media are implicated in, the module aims to provide an accurate sociological understanding of how routine social and cultural life is mediated and structured by the devices and apparatuses most of us now taken-for-granted.  The module will focus on a range of conceptions of ‘the social’ and show how media, communication and mediation are central to each of them. It will also emphasise creativity and innovation in the everyday use of media and relate this to the commercial interests that both enable and constrain this. The module will attend to social media platforms, face-to-face encounters, and meetings with others in public space, as well as collective forms of political action and resistance. It will provide students with an opportunity to develop their analytical skills through an engagement with classical social and cultural theories as well as a range of other contemporary media texts. Students will also develop their writing skills and have the opportunity to engage in practical workshops alongside more standard seminar discussions.

2.Outline syllabus:

• Media and mediation in everyday interaction

• Commercial interactions in the everyday

• Images of nation

• Screens and sociality

• Networks and memes in pleasure and protest

• The movement of objects people and things

• The curating of mobile private soundscapes

• User-generated youth media/representation

• Graffiti and street art as mediated space

• Skateboarding as mobile mediation of space

• 2011 riots as media event

• Media and diaspora.

3.Teaching and learning activities:

Teaching and learning is centred upon core readings (introduced on Minerva with a small number of key questions). Class time will be divided between 1 X hour lectures and 1 X hour seminar discussions of the reading plus some film/media screenings. Some seminar sessions will be given over to a 1 X hour practical workshop. 

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Autobiographical media essay (3000 words) 

• % Weighting: 60%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Media essay (2000 words) 

• % Weighting: 40%