Registry

Module Specifications

Current Academic Year 2012 - 2013
Please note that this information is subject to change.

Module Title	Media Technology and Society
Module Code	CM334
School	School of Communications
Online Module Resources
NFQ level	8	Credit Rating	10
Pre-requisite	None
Co-requisite	None
Compatibles	None
Incompatibles	None

Description

To offer a range of theoretical perspectives to inform an understanding of the role of technology (and in particular media and communications technologies) in shaping modern society.

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will be able to investigate whether the media which predominate at particular moments in history create specific modes of thought and, in turn, influence the shape of empires and civilizations.
2. Students will be able to debate whether a shift away from manufacturing employment towards information-based employment necessarily leads to a better planned and more caring society.
3. Students will be able to analyse how social forces interact with science and technology to shape the form and function of contemporary information and communication technologies.
4. Students will be able to explain how global broadband infrastructures such as the internet reproduce and reconfigure existing social inequalities.
5. Students will be able to analyse the effect of increasingly ubiquitous surveillance technology upon the behaviour of individuals.
6. Students will be able to explain how the increasing presence of new information and communications technologies in everyday life permit individuals to exert greater control over how their identities are perceived by others and to evade definitions of identity imposed by â€œnatureâ€.

Workload	Full-time hours per semester
*Type*	*Hours*	*Description*
Lecture	33	No Description
Library	60	No Description
Independent learning	32	No Description
Total Workload: 125

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

Lecture 1-3. Technological Determinism..
Introduction to the notion that technology develops accordingly to its own internal logic, developed by a scientific community which, referring only to itself, "imposes" new technologies on a society which is in turn transformed by the effects of these new technologies. Discussion of the extent to which such a discourse is regarded as a common-sense understanding of the relationship between technology and society, informing thinkers from McLuhan and Daniel Bell to more contemporary figures like Nicolas Negroponte and Alvin Toffler..

Lectures 4 -6. Social Construction of Technology Theory..
Having established technological determinism as the dominant popular discourse on technology and society, the course offers an alternative perspective, examining the social context within which media and communications technologies emerge. Proceeding by means of case studies this set of lectures will identify the historically contingent political, economic and social contexts/conditions in which technologies such as the Telephone, the Motion Picture Camera and the Internet have emerged and will highlight how those contexts shaped the specific design features of those technologies..

Lecture 7 - 8. Politics and Technology..
These lectures will explore the theories advanced by 20th C. thinkers on the political implications of media and communications technologies. Specifically the course will build on material introduced to students in first year surrounding the application of technologies of mass reproduction to the creation of media texts (a la a range of representatives from the Frankfurt School) and the democratic implications of the development of technologies of surveillance and information processing, storage and retrieval. Specifically the course will examine Habermas's vision of a technocratic society governed by machine/computers..

Lecture 9 - 11..
New ICTs and the promise of the future. The convergence of those technologies of computing, telecoms (and to some extent broadcasting) which have found greatest popular expression in the development of the internet have created a massive industry ,promising that human society is entering an information age where every aspect of our existence will be or is in the process of being transformed. The course will discuss the democratising potential of new ICTs, their implications for the traditional manner in which we have spatially and temporally organised our societies, and their potential for ushering in a economic growth and development. ·.

Assessment Breakdown
Continuous Assessment	100%	Examination Weight	0%

Course Work Breakdown
Type	Description	% of total	Assessment Date
Assignment	3,500 - 4,000 essay based on a single - widely interpretable - title	100%	n/a

Reassessment Requirement
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories; 1 = A resit is available for all components of the module 2 = No resit is available for 100% continuous assessment module 3 = No resit is available for the continuous assessment component
This module is category 1

Indicative Reading List

Frank Webster: 2002, Theories of the Information Society, Routledge, New York, NY, 0415406331
Harold Innis: 2007, Empire and Communications, Dundurn Group, 1 550 02662 3
Harold A. Innis: 1991, The Bias of Communications, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 0802068391
Marshall McLuhan: 1962, The Gutenberg Galaxy, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 0802060412
Marshall McLuhan: 2001, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, Routledge, London, 0415253977
Daniel Bell: 1999, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, Basic Books, New York, New York., 0465097138
Brian Winston: 1998, Media, Technology and Society, Routledge, London, 0415142296
Weibe Bijker: 1995, Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs : toward a theory of sociotechnical change, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 0262023768
Michel Foucault: 1991, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Penguin, London, 014013722X
Jurgen Habermas: 1989, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Polity Press,
Manuel Castells: 1996, The Information Age Trilogy, Blackwell, Malde, Massachusetts,
Donna Haraway: 1991, Simians, cyborgs, and women : the reinvention of nature, Routledge, New York, NY., 0415903866