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Latest Module Specifications

Current Academic Year 2025 - 2026

Module Title Emerging Media Praxis
Module Code ICT1050
Faculty Humanities & Social Sciences School Communications
NFQ level 9 Credit Rating 10
Description

Emerging Media Praxis provides a theoretically grounded space for investigating the cultural, perceptual, and ethical dimensions of emerging media. Drawing on audience studies, uses and gratifications theory, and memory studies, students examine how media shapes experience, constructs collective memory, and fulfils diverse audience needs and motivations. Through the lens of remediation and media temporalities, they develop a historically informed understanding of how new media forms absorb and reframe earlier ones, and how time, duration, and immediacy function differently across emerging media contexts. A core strand engages with ethics in emerging media production, equipping students to critically reflect on the social and political implications of new media design. Affordance theory provides an analytical framework for understanding how media environments shape creative possibility. Throughout, students develop and apply practice-based research methodologies, building the capacity to translate theoretical insight into creative inquiry and situate their own practice within broader cultural and aesthetic contexts.

Learning Outcomes

1. present and analyse trends in emerging media
2. reflect upon the ethical and social implications of developments within the field of state of the art media productions
3. develop appropriate practice-based research strategies to investigate and ways computational media are embedded in the cultural, aesthetic structures of society.
4. situate emerging media forms and trends with regard to contemporary commercial, social, and artistic uses
5. communicate theoretical insights that will contribute to practise based work.


WorkloadFull time hours per semester
TypeHoursDescription
Lecture24Lectures and showcases on emerging media
Assignment Completion48Assignment Completion
Assignment Completion24Write up and reporting on enhanced essay with theoretical contextualisation
Fieldwork64Data gathering through engagement with emerging media artefacts and installation, gallery, conference attendance
Directed learning60Review of Emerging Media and key literature
Field Trip30Exhibition, installation and gallery visits
Total Workload: 250
Section Breakdown
CRN21408Part of TermSemester 2
Coursework100%Examination Weight0%
Grade Scale40PASSPass Both ElementsN
Resit CategoryRC1Best MarkN
Module Co-ordinatorDeclan TuiteModule Teacher
Assessment Breakdown
TypeDescription% of totalAssessment Date
Digital ProjectProduce an enhanced essay that identify a key theoretical principles form the course and apply to an emerging media - the enhance essay may take the format of visual essay, podcast / audio piece, eBook or small interactive piece.60%Sem 2 End
EssayWritten essay to offer reflection and contextualisation on enhanced essay/case study40%Sem 2 End
Reassessment Requirement Type
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories;
RC1: A resit is available for both* components of the module.
RC2: No resit is available for a 100% coursework module.
RC3: No resit is available for the coursework component where there is a coursework and summative examination element.

* ‘Both’ is used in the context of the module having a coursework/summative examination split; where the module is 100% coursework, there will also be a resit of the assessment

Pre-requisite None
Co-requisite None
Compatibles None
Incompatibles None

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

Emerging Media Trends
Exemplar of media forms showcases and analysed:- Branching Narrative - non-linear Storytelling - Interactive Film Tactile Digital Media Participatory Story, Co-Creation, Civic Media, XR - Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality Experience Industry ( Alternate Reality Gaming/Escape Rooms/Immersive Augmented Theatre / Live Events) Ephemeral Media Storytelling - (snapchat etc) Data Storytelling Location sensitive media. Bio-responsive/Bio-connected Story

Frameworks
Pleasure / Spectacle / Carnival. Remediation and Remix. Convergence. Place and Space. Embodiment, Haptics and the body as a site of knowledge / interface

Who engages - why they engage.
Who engages: Defining audiences - usages, demographics and culture. Why engage: uses and gratification, information needs, pleasure, social needs and belonging.

Practice Based Research.
Understanding practice as research in media creation. Situating and contextualising practice based research artefacts.

Ethical and social implications of developments within emerging media productions
Understanding emerging media as embedded in the cultural, aesthetic structures of society. Explore both the current practices of media producers in emerging media contexts, along with novel insights about emerging media and the way it affects our lives, families, and businesses.

Indicative Reading List

Books:
  • Hill, A. and Lunt, P. eds.: 2024, The Routledge companion to media audiences., Taylor & Francis.,
  • Sullivan, John L.: 2019, Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions, and Power, Sage,
  • Manovich, L.: 2020, Cultural analytics., Mit Press.,
  • Kelly McErlean.: 2018, Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling, Routledge,
  • Patricia Leavy.: 2015, Method Meets Art, Arts-Based Research Practice, The Guilford Press;,
  • Ronald Sandler (Editor): 2016, Ethics and Emerging Technologies,, Palgrave Macmillan,,
  • Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R.: 2000, Remediation: Understanding new media., mit Press.,
  • Couldry, N. and Hepp, A.: 2018, The mediated construction of reality., John Wiley & Sons.,


Articles:
None
Other Resources

None

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