Introduction to Media Theory Essay Titles

Edward Brennan
2020

Essays are to be submitted via Brightspace. Word count 2,500 words.

Students MUST SUBMIT AN ELECTRONIC COPY on or before the deadline via

SafeAssign on Brightspace. Please submit using a .pdf or .doc file. Other file types
will not be accepted. Files should be named using the following format: Surname,
Name IMT.doc (or .pdf).

Late essays will be accepted only when accompanied by a PC1, personal

circumstances form and appropriate supporting documentation.

Please pick one title from the list below.

Deadline: Friday 18 December 2020

Please note that this essay title list consists of 2 pages.

1. Explain Joshua Meyrowitz’s three competing narratives of media theory.

Critically discuss how these three sets of idea might be used separately, and
in synthesis, to understand how YouTube interacts with society.

2. Meyrowitz argued that television, by transforming social space, had also

altered social roles. Explain Meyrowitz’s ideas and critically discuss their
relevance to social media today.

3. For many writers, the internet has created a culture of short attention spans,
poor memories, loneliness and disposable emotions. Critically discuss
whether such changes in society are the product of the affordances of the
internet or long term historical processes.

4. Critically discuss the contention that technology corporation like Google,

Amazon and Facebook, in their reliance on advertising money, user data and
light state regulation, undermine free markets and democracy.

5. Alison Hearn’s see self-promotion as something relatively new that has

accompanied the rise of ‘flexible’ capitalism since the 1970s. Explain and
critically discuss Hearn’s argument.

6. Explain Shoshana Zuboff’s argument about the dangers of ‘surveillance

capitalism’. Referring to other theorists and relevant evidence, critically
discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Zuboff’s argument.

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 7. The public sphere, as described by Jurgen Habermas, depends on reasoned
public debate between private individuals. Critically discuss the proposition
that the internet, with ‘filter bubbles’, mass surveillance, polarisation and
deliberate disinformation, has made reasoned, public debate impossible.

8. Explain, and critically discuss, David Lee’s argument that employment

practices in television production, with short-term contracts and a reliance on
informal networks, undermine the diversity of representations of society that
television companies can offer.