units

ATS3917

Faculty of Arts

18 September 2017 26 April 2024

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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.

Monash University

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)

Associate Professor Kevin Foster

Offered

Caulfield

  • First semester 2016 (Day)

Clayton

  • First semester 2016 (Day)

Synopsis

From semaphore to the silicon chip, advances in communication technology have re-shaped the public's access to and understanding of conflict. This unit will examine how the advent of new communications technology - the mass circulation newspaper, the telegraph, photography, the newsreel, radio, television, cable television, the internet and the mobile telephone - has re-framed the public's perceptions of and responses to war. Though an analysis of wars from the Crimea to Afghanistan it will analyse how, in an effort to monopolise its power or contain its effects, every war has, in part, been a battle for control over new communications technology.

Outcomes

Students who have successfully completed this unit will be able to:

  1. Identify the key communications innovations in the major wars from the Nineteenth to the early Twenty First century;
  2. Understand and be able to explain the principal effects of these technologies on public perceptions of each of these conflicts;
  3. Identify the most prevalent forms of censorship in these wars, how they were enforced, and explain their effects on the public's perception of war;
  4. Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of how new communications technologies shape media practice on the battlefield;
  5. Reflect a comprehensive knowledge of how the military employs new communications technology in its operations and yet seeks to prevent their effective use by the media;
  6. Demonstrate this knowledge in spoken and written form;
  7. Undertake unsupervised research in libraries, special collections and among peers;
  8. Students taking the unit at 3rd year level will be expected to demonstrate a more sophisticated grasp of the key theoretical concepts, a wider breath of reading at secondary level. They will be expected to assume a leadership role in tutorial group work, and will be required to append annotated bibliographies to all written work.

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.

See also Unit timetable information

Chief examiner(s)

Associate Professor Kevin Foster

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

Communications and media studies

Prerequisites

Twelve credit points of second-year Arts units.

Prohibitions

ATS2917