This plan is only available to students commencing from 2009

The aim of this major is to provide students with a progressive understanding of the social, cultural and phenomenological impacts of media and communication technologies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The sequence starts with an accessible introduction to ways of thinking about the emergence and consequences of two technologies that most students take for granted: television and telephony. Students then progress through a number of pathways and perspectives that move towards the present reality of 'intermedia'; that is, complex global media, information and communication systems and networks that people access through a variety of increasingly digital technologies.

In short, the focus of Media, Culture and Technology Major is on media in a period of transition. In terms of learning skills, the major develops conceptual frameworks and modes of analysis through which students can understand and explain not only changes in the media, but also reasons for those changes and their social and affective consequences.

Aims of the Major
The subject-specific aims of the BA Major in Media, Culture and Technology are:
• Student outcomes at the end of Level 1:
• students will have competencies in key concepts in media theory
• the ability to critically analyse the social and cultural dynamics of media technologies and their impacts on everyday life and experience
• skills in basic research and analytical writing
• the ability to reflect on their own media practices and the ways in which their understandings of self and world are formed in relation to media.

Student outcomes by the end of Level 2:
• students will have an understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of media studies
• an ability to reflect on the relationship between media and cultural organizations and political, technological and economic processes
• an understanding of the networked nature of media and the balance between local and global media
• the ability to analyse different systems of representation and aesthetic practices and the role of diverse audiences and users in this process
• skills in reading and using media theory and researching media.

Student outcomes by the end of Level 3:
• students will be able to understand the dynamics of intermedia and emerging media forms as they are played out in relation to questions of aesthetics, politics, technology, transnational media and performance
• they will also have well-developed skills in analytical and critical thinking, independent and in-depth research methods and an appreciation of the pivotal role of media in contemporary social organization.
• be able to research and explore key areas of the media industries they are focussing upon.

A student who wishes to gain a major sequence in Media, Culture and Technology must complete 48 uoc including 12 uoc at Level 1, 18 uoc at Level 2 and 18 uoc at Level 3, including the capstone course.

Level 2 offers interdisciplinary introductions to key aspects of contemporary media and information: globalisation, technology, mobile media and cultures, media policy, audiences, reading and meaning-making, performance and the popular, and the Australian context.

Level 3 offers courses that are more specialist in focus and more theoretically advanced around issues of the dynamics of intermedia and emerging media forms as they are played out in relation to questions of aesthetics, politics, technology, transnational media and performance.