Teaching

Mobile and Ubiquitous Media (Victoria University of Wellington)
This course examines the definition, development, and normalisation of ubiquitous media. Students will trace the genealogy of ubiquitous media by examining the emergence of the network society, the development of social media, mobile media and apps, and the pervasiveness of big data and algorithms. They will then critically examine the relationship between ubiquitous media and a range of sociocultural issues including identity, space/place, digital labour, and commercialisation.

Critical Approaches to Advertising and Consumer Culture (Victoria University of Wellington)
This course is designed to develop the analytical techniques required to make sense of the ways in which advertising and consumer culture affect us. The course will cover the history of advertising and consumer culture but will also focus on how they have recently been analysed, theorised and critiqued.

Social and Interactive Media (Victoria University of Wellington)
This course traces the history of social and interactive media from pre-Internet forms to the present. It considers the shift from analogue to digital, the development of interactive technologies, the web's evolution to a dynamic social mediascape and public debate about the value of social and interactive media. Adopting a critical and historical lens, this course examines how social and interactive media have transformed our understanding of the world, the production of knowledge, conceptualisations of space and place, and modes of communication and self-presentation.

Media: Texts and Images (Victoria University of Wellington)
This course is an introduction to one branch of Media Studies scholarship: namely, the close analysis of texts. It introduces the kinds of visual media texts which you may encounter in Media Studies courses and the methods of close analysis generally associated with them. In addition, it asks what the text is and what its function is in the context of our day to day experience of the mediated world. How do we use media texts in order to understand who we are and how we live, and how do we become literate in the skills necessary to understand them?

New Media: Theory and Practice (Victoria University of Wellington)
This course examines how new media transform contemporary culture and how cultural, economic, and political forces shape these new media technologies. We ask: what constitutes a network culture? What media practices are specific to such a culture? What theories and concepts aid our study of these social and technological changes?

Television and Digital Media Convergence (The University of Western Ontario)
This course examines various forms of media convergence (industrial, regulatory, technological, and cultural) and how interaction between television and digital media can alter sociocultural understandings of mass media industries and technologies. In addition, it examines the evolution of a formerly passive audience into active 'produsers' and investigates the democratizing potential of interactive and user-generated media.

The Politics of Digital Media (The University of Western Ontario)
The increasing ubiquity and accessibility of online digital media has led to popular and academic discourse that extols their liberating and even revolutionary potential. Others, however, have noted how this discourse masks the exploitation and surveillance of users and inhibits, rather than promotes, civic participation. This course examines current issues and theories concerning "user-led" sites, social networking sites, and other user-generated media such as citizen journalism, and interrogates the current relationship between digital media, Internet freedom, and democracy.

Radio and Television as Entertainment Media (The University of Western Ontario)
This course traces the development of the idea of entertainment in commercial radio and television, and situates the institutions of broadcast entertainment within wider debates around leisure, popular taste and culture. Theoretical and historical approaches to radio and television are introduced.

The History of Communication (The University of Western Ontario)
The course examines communication throughout history. It explores the relationship of communication media and technologies to society and culture. The course covers the history of different communication media, such as the printing press, telegraph, radio and television broadcasting, film and sound recording, and the Internet.

Issues in Online Identity and Community (The University of Western Ontario)
This course introduces issues of community, culture, identity, and diversity in online interaction. Online communities and immersive environments are discussed and compared their "real world" counterparts, and issues of identity development (gender, race, and sexuality) are also explored. In addition, online activism and cultural colonization are discussed in an effort to assess the potential of online communities.