History of Network Media

This subject is not offered in 2013.

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Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth year honours in media and communication, Master of Global Media Communication, Master of Arts (Media and Communication) Advanced Seminar and Shorter Thesis.

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Students who have undertaken MECM90015 History and Philosophy of Media are not able to also undertake the revised version MECM90015 History of Network Media.

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry.

The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison Unit website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

When, how and why do media change? In an epoch of increasingly rapid innovation, our crucial resource for answering this question is our knowledge and ideas about previous transitions and innovations. This subject investigates the intertwined histories of media and ideas about media. How does media change relate to cultural construction and interpretation, discursive and social formations, political economy, technology and the laws of physics? Recent media historiography has increased the historical depth and geographical range of the field, in the process proposing new ways to pose old questions such as "what is the impact of media on society?" Drawing on current research projects in the Media and Communication program, the subject will address such topics as the genealogies of contemporary media technologies, mediated democracy, media temporalities and political communication. It will place such projects in the history of philosophical engagement with media, a history which stretches back to the Biblical ban on images and Plato's attacks on writing. Relevant contemporary theories, which might include biopolitical, autonomist, actor-network and complexity approaches, will be studied and applied to the historical processes of past and present media change.

On completion of this subject:

• students will be equipped to undertake research into historical aspects of contemporary media and media philosophy as well as historical topics in media studies; and
• be able to understand processes of innovation, dissemination and adoption in future media.

Class presentation equivalent to 1000 words 25% (due during the teaching period), essay plan of 500 words 10% (due mid-semester), final reflective essay of 3500 words 65% (due in the examination period). Students are required to attend a minimum of 80% of classes in order to qualify to have their written work assessed. Any student who fails to meet this hurdle without valid reason will not be eligible to pass the subject. All required written work must be submitted in order to pass the subject. Essays submitted after the due date without an extension will be penalised 2% per day. Essays submitted after two weeks of the assessment due date without a formally approved application for special consideration or an extension will only be marked on a pass/fail basis if accepted.

A subject reader will be available.

• T W Adorno, H W Pickford (trans), Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, Columbia Univerity Press, 1998.
• G Agamben, K Attell (trans), The Open: Man and Animal, Stanford University Press, 2002.
• J Baudrillard, C Turner (trans), The Intelligence of Evil or The Lucidity Pact, Verso, 2005.
• W Benjamin, H Eiland et al (eds), Selected Writings, vol 4 1938-1940, Bellknap Press / Harvard University Press, 2003.
• S Cubitt, The Cinema Effect, MIT Press, 2004.
• R Debray, E Rauth (trans), Media Manifestos: On the Technological Transmission of Cultural Forms, Verso, 1996.
• L Gitelman et al (eds), New Media 1740-1915, MIT Press, 2003.
• R Hassan, The Chronoscopic Society: Globalization, Time and Knowledge in the Networked Economy New York, Lang, 2003.
• V Flusser, A Matthews (trans), Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, 2000.
• R Harindranath, Audience-citizens: the Media, Public Knowledge, and Interpretive Practice, Sage, 2008.
• F A Kittler, G Winthrop-Young et al (trans), Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford University Press, 1999.
• C Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, 1988.
• A Mattelart, L Carey-Liebrecht et al (trans), Networking the World 1794-2000, University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
• S McQuire, Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Cinema, Sage, 1998.
• M McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Sphere, 1964.
• V Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal, Sage, 1996.
• N Papastergiadis, "Mobility and the Nation: Skins, Machines and Complex Systems", Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers on International Migration and Ethnic Relations 3/05, Malm University, 2005.
• I Volkmer, "News in Public Memory", An International Study of Media Memories Across Generations New York, Peter Lang, 2006.
• R Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, Fontana, 1974.
• S Young (ed), Government Communication in Australia, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• S Zielinski, G Custance (trans), Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, MIT Press, 2006.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

Students who successfully complete this subject should be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of key problems in media historiography;
• recognise and explain differing methodologies for undertaking media historical research;
• identify and critically engage with the history of media theory; and
• demonstrate a capacity for critical thinking in relation to the the history and philosophy of media understand processes of change in the media.