This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2016 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

ATS3445 - Communications ethics, policy and law

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Undergraduate - Unit

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Faculty

Arts

Organisational Unit

Communications and Media Studies

Coordinator(s)

Dr Elizabeth Coleman

Offered

Caulfield

Second semester 2016 (Day)

Clayton

Second semester 2016 (Day)

Synopsis

Privacy laws, internet filtering, classification codes and whistleblowing are major issues in contemporary media and policy debates. This unit will explore the ideal of freedom of expression, and the principles governments use to limit this freedom. The first part of the unit covers the reasons why we think freedom of expression is important, and the strength of the arguments used to justify it. The second part of the unit applies these ideas to contemporary moral and political debates, such as whistleblowing and leaking, privacy and defamation, hate speech, pornography, computer games, classification laws, sedition, and internet filtering.

Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

demonstrate an understanding of the main ideas informing policy and media debates about communication
critically assess the arguments that justify freedom of expression, and the reasons this freedom may be limited
understand basic moral frameworks and identify moral issues
articulate a coherent position about a current issue relating to freedom of expression
explain their ideas and justify their conclusions in oral and written contexts.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Elizabeth Coleman

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Communications
Communications and media studies

Prerequisites

Twelve credit points of second-year Arts units.

Prohibitions

ATS2445