Media and Digital Cultures

Media and Digital Cultures offers a distinctive critical engagement with the role of media in cultural life and the exercise of power.

Explore contemporary digital cultures around the globe and broaden your horizons with this major.

Focus on the ubiquity of digital media technologies in our lives, the role of media in cultural life, the emergence of digital media industries and technologies and much more.

Learn about new forms of media consumption and cultural practice, digital media industries and technologies and the cultural formations characteristic of media-dense digital societies.

Graduates often go on to careers in the events, marketing, media and communication fields.

Study Options

Learning Pathways

Below is a list of courses you may study in Media and Digital Cultures. To view more details visit the program information page for the Bachelor of Arts or Diploma in Arts.

Level One

Introduction to Digital Cultures (COMU1500) Introduces you to the aesthetic, expressive, and social cultures arising in contemporary society. You will examine a range of visual and interactive digital media materials, and will be introduced to key concepts in the study of contemporary digital culture. This course will critically interrogate the role of digital media in the conduct of our everyday lives, while allowing you to develop both analytical and digital media skills.

Data and Society (COMU1130)

Explores the centrality of the internet in contemporary communication and culture. You will learn about the various technologies of the internet impact on how we organise and communicate online. You will engage in critical debates relating to anonymity, surveillance, censorship, online abuse, algorithmic culture, the digital divide, and digital disruption. You will learn valuable skills in relation to basic web coding, online publication, content management, and introductory media analytics.

Multimedia (COMU1140)

Introduces yow to distribute a storyworld over a variety of media platforms. You will be taught how to critically pair creative content and information with digital media. It also introduces you to both analyse and create transmedia narratives, drawing on a variety of different genres and media platforms. You will hone a set of media production skills, including audio-visual digital media as well as verbal presentation skills.

Level Two

Media and Identity (COMU2150)

Builds on focusing analyses of the ways that various media forms recreate and represent intersections between individual, social, and cultural identity. You will analyse the ways that gender, race, dis/ability, class and other aspects intersect with each other and with various media.

Gaming Cultures (COMU2100)

Undertakes a critical interrogation of contemporary gaming cultures, exploring the ways in which the narrative structures, modes of play and representation in digital games immerse players in the cultural dynamics of technology trial, and contest. You will examine the structural, technical and cultural components of games and gaming culture(s). You will also engage with the everyday, lived social experience of gaming and its contribution to our understanding of digital technology, ourselves, and our engagement with others in spaces created by games.

Digital Media Industries (COMU2140)

Historical and critical examination of continuous evolutions in media industries and technologies. The course addresses the dynamic relation between audiences, industries, and technologies. You get to explore how media businesses are being transformed by platformisation, and anticipate how they might further develop in the future.

Television in the Age of Streaming (MSTU2008)

Investigates the history and nature of television as an aesthetic, industrial, and cultural form. You will be examining television programs and genres in terms of their significance, achievement and relationship to the ways in which they are used.

Level Three

Global Digital Cultures (COMU3300)

Explores digital cultures in an international and comparative context through analysing examples of digital cultures from around the world. You will also explore the parallel evolution of digital cultures across the world, and evaluate the significance of cultural differences. You will develop a comprehensive understanding of the global geography, economy and aesthetics of digital platforms, visual culture, and social media.

Cultures of Automation (COMU3025)

Engages with a deeper context of our faith in algorithms and what has brought them to life. Exploring the science, ethics, politics, and sensory experience of automation, from its historical inception to its technocratic and popular applications in contemporary life and the spaces we inhabit. You will develop a grounded knowledge of the value systems shaping automated systems around the world, before then evaluating the automated future.

Media Platforms (COMU3110)

Examines how media platforms are comprised of data-processing infrastructure, algorithms, interfaces, and mobile devices. You will critically explore the engineering projects of media platforms in simulation, surveillance, sensing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality. This course explores how media organisations engineer and experiment with our social lives, bodies, and lived experience.

Digital Arts Project (COMU3201)

Develops skills in creative technologies to design prototype projects for performed, installed, recorded or coded digital artworks. By combining critical thinking and practical design skills, interests and knowledge, you will explore the collaborative dynamics and multi-media skills of contemporary digital cultures and arts practice.

Digital Arts Exhibition (COMU3202)

Demonstrates skills in creative technologies and event management to deliver and display performed, installed, recorded, or coded digital arts projects for a public audience. By combining individual and collective skills in creative design, digital technologies, event logistics, and promotion, you will finalize and deliver advanced level projects in digital arts and develop professional skills in public engagement in an arts context.

Testimonials

“UQ’s Bachelor of Arts gave me a diverse learning experience, offering a variety of courses with the opportunity to explore different areas of interest. I enjoy taking the practical use of theories and knowledge that we learn in class to the real cases we use in our daily life. I find it especially interesting to challenge our shaped ideas and understand the world from different perspectives.”

Ji Feng, Media and Digital Cultures and Sociology Majors

Media and Digital Cultures