The aim of this assignment is to develop your multimodal research skills.
A multimodal approach enables you to gather data from sources with hybrid formats, including text-based, audio, and visual sources.
In this assignment, we will focus on audio and visual sources. There are set questions / topics which are related to material covered in TB2 lectures. Using sources of your choice, write up your answer to one topic from the list provided below, in a 2,000-word essay. Your primary source to discuss the essay topic should be focused on an audio or visual text (example: photography, memes, posters, adverts, art and artifacts/ music video/ video games/ film/ film documentary/ audio recording/ video vlogging …etc.).
Please, do not draw on more than one source. Use your chosen multimodal source as your case study to support your argument and the theoretical insights explored in your essay. We encourage you to use screengrabs/images to illustrate key points or the close analysis of visual material. Please make sure these are cited using Harvard Style, as per the link.
Topics & questions
Choose ONE of the following topic areas:
Topic 1: The neoliberal consumer
Using examples from visual culture, analyse and discuss the ways in which neoliberalism has shifted our notion of ourselves from political citizens to consumer subjects. How is this ideology reinforced or challenged in media culture?
Topic 2: Consumer Compassion
Analyse and discuss the ways in which the individual is being positioned as the solution to structural problems, and the extent to which ‘ethical’ consumption, philanthropy and charity either effect change or reinforce the status quo.
Topic 3: Cosmopolitanism
Examine the extent to which ‘cosmopolitanism’ can provide a genuinely ethical response to globalised concerns beyond national borders.
Topic 4: Globalisation and Cultural hybridity
Discuss the extent to which transcultural contact and economic convergence have led to a process of cultural hybridisation. How is this represented and/or challenged in media culture?
Topic 5: Images of/in migration
Discuss how crisis globalisation and portable filmmaking devices are coming together to construct a new form of cinema. With reference to cinematic examples, examine how these films are challenging dominant discourses on, and representations of, migration.
Topic 6: Necropolitics, biopolitics & borders
Analyse the ways in which neoliberalism constructs a ‘living death’ for certain subjects by letting live and making die. How is this ‘living death’ represented in media culture?
Topic 7: The ethics of representation
Discuss the ways documentary cinema and the media in the West represent those outside the West and the difference between making political films and making films politically.
Topic 8: Globalised protest & resistance
Analyse the ways in which crises in neoliberalism has been responded to by protest movements and how new media technologies have made protests more globally connected.
Topic 9: Globalised conspiracy & paranoia
Discuss the extent to which late (platform) capitalism is constructing an ‘infodemic’. Is the crisis of post truth a novel problem or a recurring anxiety?
Assessment Marking Criteria
1.Selection and classification:
Ability to provide a clear rationale on the selection and classification of multimodal evidence from different sources (such as visual and/ or audio texts)
2.Research question
Ability to narrow down the research topic and define a clear research problem in light of visual/ audio evidence
3.Analysis and interpretation
Ability to articulate unbiased, evidence-based interpretation of data, paying attention to limitations of collected material
4.Presentation
Ability to present the work in an organised format using headings and subheadings, appropriate paragraphing, accurate grammar, and stylistically consistent referencing and citation
Support material
Here, you can read about the principles of document analysis, and how it combines research and employability skills(I’ll upload the material and sample student work)
