IS20160

Learning Outcomes:

1. Familiarity with contemporary issues in media and communication
2. Knowledge of a range of theories, models, and concepts in communication theory and their relevance to research and practice
3. Ability to recognise and articulate a range of debates in the sociology of the media
4. Strong foundation in communication theory and familiarity with the epistemological, methodological, sociological, historical, and political questions posed by media and communication technologies

Indicative Module Content:

Week 01 - ChatGPT & The Singularity
Topics: Media and Technological Determinism
Core eadings:
Rotman, How ChatGPT will revolutionize the economy
Li, ChatGPT: A sexy AI chatbot that will terminate humanity?
Twenge, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
Samuel, Yes, Smartphones Are Destroying a Generation, But Not of Kids
Topical readings:
Carr, Tools of the Mind.
McLuhan, The Medium is the Message
Kittler, The History of Communication Media
Ford, Writing the Revolution

Week 02 - Slacktivism & Clicktivism
Topics: Political Communication
Core eadings:
Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism
Bennett, The Logic of Connective Action
Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties
Topical readings:
Gladwell, M. (2010, 04/10/2010). Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted
Malchik, The Problem With Social-Media Protests
Zuckerman, New Media, New Civics?
Earl, Something Old and Something New: A Comment on “New Media, New Civics”


Week 03 - Fake News, Framing & Bias
Topics: Framing, Priming, Schemas, and Agenda-setting
Core eadings:
McCombs & Shaw, The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.
Scheufele, Framing as a theory of media effects
Hilton & Von Hippel, Stereotypes
Allport, Toward a Science of Public Opinion
Topical readings:
Lotan, Fake News Is Not the Only Problem
Hindman, Facebook Has a Superuser-Supremacy Problem.
Marche, How We Solved Fake News the First Time
Kolbert, Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

Week 04 - Virality and Influence
Topics: Influence, Contagion, and Gatekeeping
Core eadings:
Katz, The Two-Step Flow of Communication
Ognyanova, Multistep flow of communication
White, The "gate keeper": A case study in the selection of news
Barzilai-Nahon, Gatekeeping: A Critical Review.
Topical readings:
Chayka, What the “Creator Economy” Promises—and What It Actually Does
Fletcher, Using social media appears to diversify your news diet, not narrow it
Lotan, Israel, Gaza, War & Data – The Art of Personalizing Propaganda

Week 05 - AI Under the Hood
Topics: Word Embeddings, Machine Learning, and AI Training Data
Core eadings:
Voita, E. (2020). Word Embeddings.
Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., ... & Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is all you need.
Topical readings:
Coldewey, D. (2024). AI models have favorite numbers, because they think they’re people.

Week 06 - Artificial Communication
Topics: Stochastic Parrots, Artificial Communication, and LLM-driven Media Effects
Core eadings:
Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021). On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?
Esposito, E. (2022). Artificial Communication? Algorithms as Interaction Partners.
Topical readings:
Sopan, D. (2025). Saying ‘Thank You’ to ChatGPT Is Costly. But Maybe It’s Worth the Price.
Germain, T. (2025). Is Google about to destroy the web?
Öhman, C. (2024). We are Building Gods: AI as the Anthropomorphised Authority of the Past.

Week 07 - Narrative and Content Analysis
Topics: Media Frames, Cultural Narratives, and Narrative Lenses
Core eadings:
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.
Topical readings:
Abbott, H. P. (2008). The rhetoric of narrative.

Week 08 - Critical Theory & Cultural Studies
Topics: Cultural Industry, Cultural Studies, and Stuart Hall’s Model of Communication
Core eadings:
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (2002). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
Pillai, P. (1992). Rereading Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding Model.
Topical readings:
Jeffries, S. (2016). Why a forgotten 1930s critique of capitalism is back in fashion.
Ross, A. (2016). The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming.

Week 09 - Misinformation & Disinformation
Topics: Cybernetics. Communication as Ritual, and Communication as Transmission
Core eadings:
Shannon & Weaver, The mathematical theory of communication
Von Foerster, Epistemology of Communication
Carey, Communication as Culture
Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media
Topical readings:
McKernon, Fake news and the public
Bernstein, Bad News: Selling the story of disinformation
Illing, A contrarian take on the disinformation panic
Owen, This is how an Iranian network created a “disinformation supply chain”

Week 10 - Cancel Culture & Public Opinion
Topics: Public Sphere, Public Opinion, and the Spiral of Silence
Core eadings:
Susen, Habermas's theory of the public sphere
Lippmann, The Public and its Role
Noelle-Neumann, The spiral of silence
Brett & Jennifer, The effect of explicit online comment moderation on three spiral of silence
Topical readings:
Cole, The Mathematics of Cancel Culture
Wallace-Wells, What the Twitter Files Reveal About Free Speech and Social Media
Gopnik, What Cafés Did for Liberalism
Hampton, Social media and the ‘spiral of silence’

Week 11 - Media Theory and Transhumanism
Topics: Media Theory, Transhumanism, and Technological Determinism
Core eadings:
Innis,The Bias of Communication
McLuhan, Understanding Media
Kittler, The Artificial Intelligence of World War: Alan Turing
Topical readings:
Klein, E. (2022). I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message.
Dempsey, The Six-billion-dollar post-human

Student Effort Hours:

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:

Class activities include lectures and discussion sessions. NB: Use of AI tools such as Chat GPT to generate assignments is not permitted unless instructed or approved by the lecturer. Such use of AI-generated content without explicit permission and attribution will be considered as a form of academic misconduct.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.

Module Requisites and Incompatibles

Not applicable to this module.
 

Assessment Strategy

 

Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Not yet recorded.

Abbott, H. P. (2008). The rhetoric of narrative.
Allport, Toward a Science of Public Opinion.
Barzilai-Nahon, Gatekeeping: A Critical Review.
Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021). On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?
Bennett, The Logic of Connective Action.
Bernstein, Bad News: Selling the story of disinformation.
Brett & Jennifer, The effect of explicit online comment moderation on three spiral of silence.
Carey, Communication as Culture.
Carr, Tools of the Mind.
Chayka, What the “Creator Economy” Promises—and What It Actually Does.
Chen, The Future of Social Media Is a Lot Less Social.
Coldewey, D. (2024). AI models have favorite numbers, because they think they’re people.
Cole, The Mathematics of Cancel Culture.
Confessore, $2 Billion Worth of Free Media for Donald Trump.
Confessore, The Follower Factory.
Couldry, Mediatization or mediation.
Cushion, The Trumpification of the US media: why chasing news values distorts politics.
Deacon & Stanyer, Mediatization: key concept or conceptual bandwagon?
Dempsey, The Six-billion-dollar post-human.
Earl, Something Old and Something New: A Comment on “New Media, New Civics”.
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.
Esposito, E. (2022). Artificial Communication? Algorithms as Interaction Partners.
Fletcher, Using social media appears to diversify your news diet, not narrow it.
Ford, Writing the Revolution.
Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism.
Germain, T. (2025). Is Google about to destroy the web?
Gladwell, M. (2010, 04/10/2010). Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.
Gopnik, What Cafés Did for Liberalism.
Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties.
Hampton, Social media and the ‘spiral of silence’.
Hilton & Von Hippel, Stereotypes.
Hindman, Facebook Has a Superuser-Supremacy Problem.
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (2002). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.
Illing, A contrarian take on the disinformation panic
Innis,The Bias of Communication.
Jeffries, S. (2016). Why a forgotten 1930s critique of capitalism is back in fashion.
Katz, The Two-Step Flow of Communication.
Kittler, The Artificial Intelligence of World War: Alan Turing.
Kittler, The History of Communication Media.
Klein, E. (2022). I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message.
Kolbert, Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds.
Li, ChatGPT: A sexy AI chatbot that will terminate humanity?
Lippmann, The Public and its Role.
Livingstone, On the Mediation of Everything.
Lotan, Fake News Is Not the Only Problem.
Lotan, Israel, Gaza, War & Data – The Art of Personalizing Propaganda.
Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media.
Malchik, The Problem With Social-Media Protests.
Marche, How We Solved Fake News the First Time.
McCombs & Shaw, The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.
McKernon, Fake news and the public.
McLuhan, The Medium is the Message.
McLuhan, Understanding Media.
McQuail, D., & Deuze, M. (2020). McQuail’s Media and Mass Communication Theory.
Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.
Noelle-Neumann, The spiral of silence.
Ognyanova, Multistep flow of communication.
Öhman, C. (2024). We are Building Gods: AI as the Anthropomorphised Authority of the Past.
Owen, This is how an Iranian network created a “disinformation supply chain”.
Pillai, P. (1992). Rereading Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding Model.
Ross, A. (2016). The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming.
Rotman, How ChatGPT will revolutionize the economy.
Samuel, Yes, Smartphones Are Destroying a Generation, But Not of Kids.
Scheufele, Framing as a theory of media effects.
Shannon & Weaver, The mathematical theory of communication.
Sopan, D. (2025). Saying ‘Thank You’ to ChatGPT Is Costly. But Maybe It’s Worth the Price.
Strömbäck, Four Phases of Mediatization.
Susen, Habermas's theory of the public sphere.
Twenge, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., ... & Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is all you need.
Voita, E. (2020). Word Embeddings.
Von Foerster, Epistemology of Communication.
Wallace-Wells, What the Twitter Files Reveal About Free Speech and Social Media.
White, The "gate keeper": A case study in the selection of news.
Zuckerman, New Media, New Civics?

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.