Veidlapa Nr. M-3 (8)

Course Description Status: Approved

Course Description Version: 25/26.R.1.00

Description Period: 2025./26 academic year rudens semestris

Study Course Accepted: -

Study Course Description

Media Theories

Main Study Course Information

Course Code
KSK_161
Branch of Science
Media and communications
ECTS
3.00
Target Audience
Communication Science
LQF
Level 7
Study Type And Form
Full-Time

Study Course Implementer

Course Supervisor
Ilva Skulte
Structure Unit Manager
Ieva Puzo
Structural Unit
Faculty of Social Sciences
Contacts

Dzirciema street 16, Rīga, szf@rsu.lv

About Study Course

Objective

To promote knowledge and understanding of students about information exchange and peculiarities of communication using media, as well as peculiarities of different media and discussion about them in the history of media theory. To form competence of students in media theory to understand the development of media and its effects on culture and society.

Preliminary Knowledge

Analysis of Communication Situations.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge

1.On successful course completion master students understand the role of media in public life and culture, know the development of theoretical thought about media, their importance and use traditions.

Skills

1.On successful course completion students critically analyse media theoretical texts and insights from the historical and modern aspect, analyse functioning of media in its specifics, able to analyse communication from the point of view of specifics of media.

Competences

1.On successful course completion students independently orient in approaches and theories, which allow to better understand modern mediated communication, as well as are able to critically analyse the role of media in the history of society and culture.

Assessment

Individual work

Title
% from total grade
Grade
1.

Individual work
-
-
To read required readings, to prepare and present an overview of theories created by two authors, to write an essay on a current problem in modern media theory, to prepare for examination.

Examination

Title
% from total grade
Grade
1.

Examination
-
-
Attendance of lectures and seminars, quality of answers, level of understanding and critical view (20%), depth of understanding of presented theories (10%), critical analysis (10%), accuracy of the overview (10%), argumentation and formulation of conclusions (10%), perceptibility and accuracy of graphical and visual presentation (10%), answers to questions and discussion during the examination (30%).

Study Course Theme Plan

FULL-TIME
Part 1

  1. Lecture

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

History of communication and history of media theory.

  1. Lecture

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

History of communication and history of media theory.

  1. Class/Seminar

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

Role of writing in culture. Plato, Derrida.

  1. Class/Seminar

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

Role of writing in culture. Plato, Derrida.

  1. Lecture

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

Technologies, society and culture.

  1. Lecture

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

Technologies, society and culture.

  1. Class/Seminar

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

Books and reading nowadays.

  1. Lecture

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

Critical ideas. Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and their effect on the development of media theory.

  1. Lecture

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

Critical ideas. Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and their effect on the development of media theory.

  1. Class/Seminar

Modality
Location
Contact hours
On site
Auditorium
2

Topics

New media in the media theoretical aspect. Presentations of final papers.
Total ECTS (Creditpoints):
3.00
Contact hours:
20 Academic Hours
Final Examination:
Exam (Oral)

Bibliography

Required Reading

1.

Aronson, S.H. Bell's Electrical Toy, What's the Use? The Sociology of Early Telehone Usage. In Pool, Ithiel de Sola (ed): The Social Impact of the Telephone. 2nd ed. - Cambridge, Massaachusetts and London, 1977.

2.

Flusser, Vilém. Towards a philosophy of photography. Reaktion Books, 2013.

3.

Brecht, B. The Radio as an Apparatus of the Communication. In Semiotext(e), Neil Strauss (ed.), 16, VI, 1, New York, 1993

4.

Baudrillard, J., & Maclean, M. The masses: The implosion of the social in the media. New Literary History, 577-589. 1985.

5.

Bynum, T.W. Norbert Wiener’s Vision: The Impact of “the Automatic Age” on Our Moral Lives //

6.

Enzensberger, H.M. Constituents of a Theory of the Media. In Electronic Culture. Technology and Visual Representation, Timothy Druckrey (ed.), New York, 1996

7.

McLuhan, M. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 3.ed. - Gingko Press, 2003

8.

Régis Debray, What is Mediology?

9.

Kellner, D. Baudrillard: A New McLuhan? //

10.

Luhman, N. The Reality of Mass Media. - Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

11.

The Media: An Introduction. 2.ed. - ed. By A.Briggs and P.Cobley. - London, New York: Pearson Ltd., 2002.

12.

Ong, W. Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word. 2.ed. - London, Routledge, 2002.

13.

Platons. Faidrs.//Dialogi un vēstules. - Rīga: Zinātne, 1999.

14.

Stiegler, B. Relational Ecology and the Digital Pharmakon.

15.

Kittler. F. Towards an Onthology of Media. in: Theory, Culture and Society. Vol. 26, No. 2-3, 2009, p. 23-31

16.

Virilio P. Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

17.

Kress, G. Literacy in the New Media Age. – London: Routledge, 2003.

18.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

19.

Couldry, Nick. "Does ‘the media’have a future?." European journal of communication 24.4 (2009): 437-449.

20.

Postman, Neil. "The disappearance of childhood." Childhood Education 61.4 (1985): 286-293.

21.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne (1991). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge

22.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.

23.

McRobbie, Angela. "Young women and consumer culture: An intervention." Cultural studies 22.5 (2008): 531-550.

24.

Hepp A, Hjarvard S, Lundby K. Mediatization: theorizing the interplay between media, culture and society. Media, culture & society. 2015 Mar;37(2):314-24.

25.

Malabou C. Plasticity at the dusk of writing: Dialectic, destruction, deconstruction. Columbia University Press; 2010.

26.

McQuail, Denis, and Mark Deuze. McQuail’s media and mass communication theory. Sage, 2020.

27.

Fuchs, Christian. Social media: A critical introduction. Sage, 2021.

28.

Kovač, M., Phillips, A., van der Weel, A., & Wischenbart, R. (2019). What is a Book?. Publishing research quarterly, 35(3), 313-326.