2024/25 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

COMM3781 Mobile Media

20 creditsClass Size: 63

Module manager: Ludmila Lupinacci
Email: L.Lupinacci@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable

Year running 2024/25

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Module summary

This module examines the contemporary ecology of mobile media in the context of everyday life. ‘Mobile media’, here, are seen as a broader set of sociotechnical practices performed with, on, and through particular portable digital devices. Considering the pervasiveness of mobile media, the module provides students with the tools to critically reflect on these devices, technologies, and practices from a media and communication perspective.

Objectives

On completion of the module, students should have good knowledge of theoretical and methodological frameworks that can be used to understand and critically assess contemporary mobile media technologies and ecologies. They should be able to analyse and evaluate mobile media using that theory to research its impact on people and societies.

The module aims to allow students to develop an in-depth and relational understanding of how these technologies and practices are situated within broader debates in social theory, addressing both what is specific to mobile media and what reflects previously theorised artefacts, practices, and experiences.

Students should be able to reflect on these objectives and apply them to critical thinking about mobile and other digital systems of the future, and the society that they will help to create.

Learning outcomes
By the end of the term, students enrolled in this module should be able to:

1. Mobilise theories and concepts to identify, examine, research and solve mobile media-related problems in real-world settings.

2. Critically analyse and evaluate technologies and practices that are pervasive in the context of everyday life.

3. Support claims and arguments with strong theoretical frameworks and sound empirical evidence.

4. Situate the topic within broader, foundational debates in media and communication and the social sciences more generally.

Skills Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following skills learning outcomes:

1. The ability to think and communicate critically, taking into account a variety of arguments

2. The ability to identify and engage with relevant arguments in scholarship pertaining to a specific research project.

Syllabus

Issues to be covered include:

* defining mobile media and the ecology of the mobile media industries, highlighting both disruptions and continuities.

* technological convergence and the integration of different affordances and functions (such as geolocation, photography, communications) in mobile media

* the ‘appification’ of everyday life, and the centrality of mobile media in different realms– from communication to entertainment, information, advertising, logistics, transport, banking and payment, shopping, among many others

* the technical, material, embodied, cultural and political-economic dimensions of mobile media technologies, practices and experiences.

* consumption patterns and habits commonly associated with mobile media

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	10	1.00	10.00
Seminar	10	1.00	10.00
Private study hours			180.00
Total Contact hours			20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Module assessment is designed to include a minor (30 % weighting) piece to be submitted during the semester, with feedback before the end of the semester, and a major (70% weighting) piece to be submitted in the exam period after the semester. Therefore, the feedback from the first assessment can provide guidance to students and act as a progress monitor, before they finalise their work for the larger second assessment. The weekly seminars provide opportunity for more regular progress checking, as a space for dialogue about the critical concepts in the module schedule, but also about the module itself, and assessment. Prior to the assessments these sessions can be used to check progress and to give feedback through staff- or peer-led sessions, where ideas are generated, critiqued, and developed.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Reflective log	2000-2500 words	30.00
Project	3000-3500 words	70.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 04/09/2024

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