Media in cultural context

Discussions: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

This course explores the international trade in television text, considering the ways in which 'foreign' programs find places within 'domestic' schedules. Looking at the life television texts maintain outside of their home market, this course examines questions of globalization and national cultures of production and reception. Students will be introduced to a range of positions about the nature of international textual trade, including economic arguments about the structuring of international markets and ethnographic studies about the role imported content plays in the formation of hybrid national identities. Students will be encouraged to consider the role American content is made to play in non-American markets. This course looks at the specificities of local broadcasting environments and examines representational and rational politics in a globalised world. Issues include:

The course is designed to provide students with a set of research skills that will equip them to draw together information from a variety of sources to examine cultural phenomenon. It requires students to move between cultural and media studies discourse and business discourse, encouraging students to consider topics from a variety of perspectives. An emphasis is placed on gathering a variety of resources, critiquing the value of information sources, and moving between multiple types of texts.

21L.715 is a HASS-CI-M (Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Communication Intensive-Major) subject. In this class, CI requirements will be satisfied by:

Please see assignments for more detailed instructions for the written work.

Each student is required to source materials for the class for a particular week. The mechanics of this will be discussed in class. Smaller in-class written tasks will be undertaken in some weeks, and students are expected to complete all of these to complete the course.

The Literature section has formulated this statement and policy for all plagiarism cases:

Plagiarism—use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement—is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution, consult the style guides available at the MIT Writing and Communication Center and the MIT Libraries Web site on Avoiding Plagiarism.

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