Introductory description

SO254-15 Media, Audiences and Social Change

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week Lecture Topic
1 Introduction to media and social change in the era of COVID-19

2 Media, audiences and social change during crises: The role of scientific information

3 Media, audiences and social change during crises: Fake news and social attitudes

4 Media, audiences and social change during crises: Conspiracy and social critique

5 Media, audiences and social change during crises: The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media

6 Reading Week

7 Media, audiences and social change during crises: Conducting media audience research online

8 Media, audiences and social change during crises: Online ethnography

9 Social media audiences and sentiment analysis

10 Media, audiences and social change in the 21st century

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate an intermediate level of understanding of the relationship between media and society
• Demonstrate an intermediate level of understanding of key theoretical perspectives relevent to media audience research
• Demonstrate an intermediate level of understanding of the significance and sociological implications of socio-technological developments in transforming the role of media and audiences in contemporary societies
• Demonstrate an intermediate level of understanding of how major events in contemporary global society are selectively defined, elaborated and evaluated – and amplified – by news media, and the sociological implications of these patterns
• Demonstrate an intermediate level of understanding of the role of legacy and social media in fostering social change
• Critically engage with debates about the role of media in society.
• Critically appraise some of the approaches and methods of the empirical investigation of the relationship between media and society.
• Able to draw analytically on a range of resources and materials, including academic, journalistic, and other media texts, to inform understanding, argument and analysis.
• Able to engage confidently in oral and written analysis and debate and to present arguments in a coherent, structured, and balanced fashion, with critical introspection where appropriate.

Indicative reading list

Thompson, J. 1995. The media and modernity: A social theory of the media. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

M. E. McCombs and D. L. Shaw (1972) The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quarterly 36, pp. 176-187.

Introne et al. (2018). How people weave online information into pseudoknowledge. Social Media and Society 4(3).

Thompson, John B. (1988). Mass communication and modern culture: Contribution to a critical theory of ideology. Sociology 22:359-383.

Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. London: Vintage. [Manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media (chap. 1 - 'A Propaganda Model')]

Huber et al. (2019). Fostering public trust in science: The role of social media. Public Understanding of Science 28(7): 759-777.

Apuke et al. (2020). Fake news and COVID-19: modelling the predictors of fake news sharing among social media users. Telematics and Informatics.

S. Hall, ‘Encoding / decoding’ in Hall et al (eds) Culture, Media, Language (1974) [Culture, media, language [electronic resource] : working papers in cultural studies]

Mueller-Herbst et al. (2020). Saw it on Facebook: The Role of Social Media in Facilitating Science Issue Awareness. Social Media and Society 6(2): 1-14.

Interdisciplinary

Module engages with social anthropology, media studies, communication studies and psychology (in addition to sociology).

International

Examples and literature in the course engage extensively with global challenges and cases across a diverse range of national and supra-national contexts.

Subject specific skills

Media literacy
Literature review
Application of theory to real world examples
Methodological evaluation of empirical social research

Transferable skills

Critical thinking
Desk research
Ability to synthesise ideas
Time management
Critical introspection
Communication skills