Film & Media Studies

This course introduces contemporary film and television criticism through lectures, film screenings, and discussion.

The course discusses the role of cultural policy in the age of platform giants and how the digital media ecology of major platforms creates inter-dependencies with other platforms, established cultural institutions, legacy media, public service institutions, digital creators, and users. The course begins with a discussion on the platform society and how the notion of digital cultural politics relates to cultural, media, and communication policy, as well as the internet and cultural industries. It lays the foundations from the perspective of dominant platforms and platform providers, with a specific focus on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, and YouTube. The second part of the course looks at the inter-dependencies that these platforms generate between themselves and cultural institutions, analyzing cultural institution’s use of platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The third part of the course focuses on data politics, user rights ethics, and discrimination. The final part of the course is composed of a day-long workshop where students work on themes and topics of their own choice as part of their final project. This course is taken in conjunction with the course Cultural Policy – Theory, Method & Analysis (HMKK03611U), a compulsory but non-credit-bearing course that provides students with adequate tools to conduct research within the field of cultural policy, with an emphasis on the relationship between theoretical framework, methodological design, and analysis. 

This course examines how crime is framed and represented in the media. It covers the interconnections between crime, power and its representation within the media and popular culture; and how relations of power pervade and institutionalize the meanings of deviance and crime and how these meanings can be sedimented or challenged in cultural terms.

This course focuses on the analysis of various media texts, historical developments within media, and their social and cultural contexts in the English-speaking world. It provides a foundation for understanding film, television, and digital media, and their relation to representation, culture, technology, and aesthetics. The course introduces media such as photography, feature films, avant-garde cinema, documentary films, television, digital media, print, and social media; and covers the concepts, methods, and various cultural theories within film and media. Formal and stylistics elements of film such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing, as well as approaches to understanding narrative and genre, are also covered. Students examine media products as a part of their social and cultural contexts and work collaboratively on the creation of a multimedia product.

This course explores the generation strategy and development laws of different types of radio and television programs. It covers the characteristics, planning, production process, and operation mode of different program types, as well as the relationship with market mechanism, audience needs, and the social and cultural environment.

This course examines how journalist have occupied a unique place in Western popular culture and looks at questions such as why are journalist so ubiquitous in popular culture; how accurate have those depictions been now and in the past; how has the depiction of journalist changed over time, and how have those changes mirrored the public perceptions of journalists and journalism; how do those depictions of journalist compare to reality; how has popular culture dealt with real life ethical dilemmas that confront journalists; and how effective have real-life journalists been at telling their own narratives — portraying the gritty reality, or embellishing the fictionalized view of the profession.