Mafalda Stasi mafalda.stasi@coventry.ac.uk

Ady Evans adrienne.evans@coventry.ac.uk

We don’t know who discovered water, but we know that it wasn’t

the fish’ - McLuhan

Has living in a digital world changed us?

In pairs, spend 5 minutes discussing the case studies in your handout:

- how do you make sense of these situations?

- what is your ethical stance?

Be prepared to discuss

Today’s Lecture

• Give an overview of the module content and structure

• Describe and discuss the coursework (1 and 2), hand-ins and feedback return

• Define expectations

Module Structure

Timetable

Seminar and Tutorial Groups

• Seminars will be the main space to discuss lecture content and receive feedback

• Work will be discussed and marked during the tutorials – you must be present!

• Tutorial groups will be worked out in this afternoon’s seminar…

Questions?

Module Content

Racing to the Top

Audiences’ online experience enables a distinctive engagement with the media

Kido Lopez’s ethnography of antiracist fan activists addresses the politics of representation, whitewashing and racebending

The Internet is Really Really Good...

• Digital world is changing our sexual relations

• This lecture will consider sexual subcultures online

• It will look specifically at Magnet’s visual analysis on suicidegirls.com

The Gay Science

What are the implications when a sexual culture moves online?

How do notions of masculinities play into these dynamics?

We will looks at a cartography of barebacking sites by Dowsett, Williams, Ventuneac, and Carballo-Dieguez

Is Big Brother Watching?

• This lecture will look at how social class is

constructed through reality TV

• It will do so by drawing on research that shows how audience and subjectivity are made through reality

TV

• See the Skeggs reading

Subjectivity (or sense of self) interacts with digital world and new forms of

surveillance

Skeggs, Thumim and Wood’s research on reality

TV

How class identities are formed through affect/emotion

Reality TV

provides a

number of ways

for people

to police ‘taste’

Stealing the SceneManga fans produce unofficial translations (scanlations) and put them online

This study is a netography of web texts and interviews by scanlators

Embodiment Online: The Case of Pro-Ana

WARNING! This lecture deals with eating disorders – if you have reason to believe this

would cause you upset (personally or politically) you

are permitted non-attendance.

We have worked this out in line with the required

coursework, so that it will not affect your grade.

Embodiment Online: The Case of Pro-Ana

Eating disorders raise a number of questions for feminist research

e.g. oppression or resistance?

The pro-ana/mia communities equally raise important questions

about the body online

This lecture will review Boero and Pascoe’s observation of pro-ana

discussion forums.

Questions?

Module Assessments

Learning Objectives

• Engage professionally in a group project using online, digital sources and evaluate critically the data produced;

• Critically distinguish and evaluate the various authorities of the source materials available online;

• Critically evaluate conventional research methodologies appropriately to use productively in online research;

• Understand both the strengths and the limitations of online digital research methods

Coursework 1

• The first coursework is a group project developed during the module. Each week in the lectures you will be presented with different research projects. In your groups you will need to read the articles related to each week, and produce a critical review in video form of those articles.

• You will need to upload your video reviews to the following vimeo site on a weekly basishttps://vimeo.com/groups/criticalmediamethods

• In your morning tutorials the groups will present and discuss their video review to their tutor. Your tutor will mark you on the basis of the learning outcomes for the module.

• Indicative grades for each piece will be given at the end of the day. A total of 5 videos must be produced throughout the module.

Coursework 2• Identify an empirical paper of your own. The paper should draw

on either a topic or methods (or both) concerned with living in a digital world.

• Using the ideas presented in the lectures, and on what you have learnt through your video reviews, your essay should be a critical review of that paper.

• Your review should include a discussion the theoretical perspective, the research methods, and the findings of the paper, as well as evidence that you have read around the subject and engaged in further reading.

Submission Dates and Final Grades

Coursework 1 will be marked throughout the module and your grade will be an average mark of the five (best) videos you produce.

Coursework 2 is due on the 3th of March, both electronically through Turnitin and hardcopy at reception.

Questions?

Expectations

Group WorkIt is essential for everyone to ‘engage professionally’ in the group work for this module – we reserve the right to drop individual peoples’ grades!

Commitment, Engagement, Attendance

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the

goal of true education(Martin Luther King)

Commitment is part of any module, and engaging in the tasks and activities will help you gain experience and

understanding. Each week, a number of activities will be presented to you in lectures and seminars, and each of these has a purpose. They are meant to be interesting and creative,

and they are there to help you.

• The expectation at University level is for you to be developing a professional and positive attitude to work.

Attendance will be monitored throughout

the module. This includes punctuality – if you always turn up late, this will be flagged up by

tutors and may effect your grade.

Departmental Seminar

• 15th January: Prof Matt Hills

• Fan cultures (i.e. relevant to the module!)

• 1-2.30 ET130 – you should make every effort to attend and engage.

Summary

• This module explores our relationship with the digital world through a series of research projects.

• The assessments are 5 (of the best) group work video reviews and an individual essay.

• Videos will be marked weekly; the essay is due 3rd March. All feedback returned 17th March.

Final Questions?