Credit Points 10

Coordinator Milissa Deitz Opens in new window

Description The ability to critically consume and strategically create a range of digital media is vital to the health of a democratic, civic society. Through both the practice of writing, and the study of writing as a ‘designed space’, you’ll learn techniques that will help you find your voice as a communicator so you can inspire, compel and inform audiences. You will be provided with opportunities to experiment with and study a number of media platforms as you consider how the digital sphere and its associated technologies are shaping and informing the way we read, write and communicate.

School Humanities & Comm Arts

Discipline Written Communication

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 4 10cp

Check your fees via the Fees page.

Level Undergraduate Level 3 subject

Pre-requisite(s) COMM 1044

Restrictions

Must have passed 80cp at Level 1 

Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of this subject, students will be able to: 

1. Demonstrate English language writing and research skills.
2. Apply a range of theories of writing and storytelling in both critical and creative contexts.
3. Employ a variety of genres and forms of writing and storytelling, particularly in networked environments.
4. Engage in a writing research practice in response to a set topic or brief.
5. Identify the workings of culture within networked media writing practices.
6. Demonstrate an applied understanding of media ethics in networked environments.
   

Subject Content

1. This Level 3 subject will build mainly on the content of the new Level 1 subject Professional Communication by continuing to interrogate the factors influencing human communication and how language informs the social creation of meaning. It will consider the way both tools and cultural are shaping and informing digital communication. We'll look at how we communicate personally and politically, and consciously and subconsciously in networked environments.
2. By showcasing innovations in media platforms that have renegotiated both the means and the tools for telling and engaging with stories, we will explore how writing spaces have changed (and how they are continuing to change) older models of reading, writing and communications practices. We will look at how the affordances of new media environments invite innovative ways of agitating for change, and how the concept of ‘community’ can be used to generate public interest.
3. Students will be encouraged to demonstrate a conceptual and applied understanding of how knowledge is constructed and circulated in networked environments; the difference between ‘truth’ and ‘opinion’; and theoretical and applied understandings of the way technologies both encourage and inhibit particular writing, reading and communications practice and cultures. 
4. By examining the role of digital cultures in contemporary life and identifying the historical, political, ethical and technological forces of communications - written, oral, digital and visual – students will investigate emerging technologies and how they influence contemporary content practices. For example, we will look at ideas of identity in Australian culture in order to locate personal identity with cultural practices; how national identity is represented and promoted in media; and the overall role of media in the development of identity as important cultural category. By considering the difference between self and identity in networked environments, and the way authority and authenticity is constructed in the formation of the ‘digital writing self’, students will learn how writing tools not only shape expression but also behaviour, leading to environment-specific patterns of engagement and participation.
5. Students will learn how to:
   Combine research methods including discourse and textual analysis to examine written, spoken and visual texts at various stages of production.
   Present complex narratives to general audiences.
   Continue to develop research and evaluation skills for media storytelling practices. 
   Relate concepts, themes and case studies to their own emerging professional interests.