Admission requirements
Only available for Book and Digital Media Studies students and BDMS exchange students.
Description
Communication is an essential and basic characteristic of the human species. Developments in communication technologies, from writing to digital media, have influenced the inscription and transmission of human culture through the ages. The nature of the technology used for communication has a major impact, both on society and on the content of cultural expressions. A change of medium is a sociotechnical process characterised by a mixture of continuities and discontinuities, much of which can be shown to follow directly from technological properties of the technologies involved. Today, digital media influence and disrupt existing patterns of storage, distribution and access to information. Digitisation is changing the role of all traditional media, including books. The position of authors, publishers, booksellers as well as that of readers is affected. Existing categorisations of media blur, new content genres come available on-line and the media industries are restructured by the process. Moreover, in the age of interactive media the audience is taking a new role as a producer of content. On-line media also provide new chances to access historical collections, including those containing books and manuscripts. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to medial change in general, and to the significance of the digital medium for present-day culture and society in particular.
Course objectives
Students learn to understand the broad social and cultural implications of the introduction and advance of new mediums and the recurring patterns that characterise medial change as a sociotechnical process. To gain insight in the role of media as ‘transformative technologies’ in social and cultural history students will study the transmission ‘cycle’ of text and the other information modalities (sound, still and moving images), and familiarise themselves with key concepts, definitions and models in the study of textual transmission and communication. In the analysis of the role of the media in the transmission of information and knowledge particular emphasis will be on the current wholesale adoption of digital technology in information and communication.
Timetable
The timetable will be available by June 1 on the website
Mode of instruction
One-hour lecture plus one-hour seminar per week.
Course Load
TA brief calculation of the course load, broken down by:
Total course load for the course (5 EC) is 140 hours.
Attending lectures and seminars: 2 hours per week x 14 weeks = 28 hours
Reading/studying the compulsory literature: 56 hours
Completing assignments: 8 hours
Course paper (final essay, including reading / research): 68 hours
Assessment method
- essay, assignments: final essay (75%) and assignments (25%).
In the case of a fail, you are entitled to rewrite the final course essay (plus if course assignments were insufficient, an additional assignment).
To complete the final mark, please take notice of the following:
1) the final grade for the course is established by determining the weighted average
2) the final grade for the course is established by (i) determination of the weighted average combined with (ii) additional requirements. These additional requirements generally relate to one or more of the subtests always be sufficient
Blackboard
Blackboard will be used to provide students with an overview of current affairs, as well as specific information about (components of) the course.
Reading list
Van der Weel, Adriaan, Changing Our Textual Minds: Towards a Digital Order of Knowledge, Manchester UP, 2011
Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media, from Gutenberg to the Internet (London: Polity Press, 2010)
Selected articles (full bibliography to be provided).
Registration
Enrollment through uSis is mandatory. If you have any questions, please contact the departmental office, tel. 071 5272144 or mail: ma-mediastudies@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs
N/A
Contact
Media Studies student administration, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 102C. Tel. 071 5272144; <ma-mediastudies@hum.leidenuniv.nl>
Coordinator of studies: Ms S.J. de Kok, MA, P.N. van Eyckhof 3, room 1.01b