2015-16 Iteration: “Keep your coins, I want change” M84MC Communication Practice 2015-16

This module is concerned with both the practice of applied communication and with a discursive and critical understanding of such practices in the contemporary context. The module focuses on the structures, roles and functions associated with specific communication practices, and it will address discourses associated with a variety of activist organisations. For example, we will consider LGBT and women’s rights associations, disability activists, antiracist organisations, environmental pressure groups. This module looks at communication practices in a globalised and multicultural context beyond the “West”, and requires you to work in groups with students of different nationalities.

The module expects you to contact and collaborate with an activist organisation of your choice. We also require you to attend extra sessions with external speakers, workshops, field work, etc. Your work with your chosen organisation will result into a series of events, reports and studies intended to contribute to your chosen cause.

The coursework should also perform a theoretically informed critique of contemporary communication practices. You should consider the history of disciplines and paradigms within the communication practices of a variety of activist groups, and debate their related points of saliency.

2014-15 Iteration: “The Madonna and Lady Gaga brands: strategic representations, ideologies and discourses”  

This module performs a theoretically informed critical analysis of some of the communication strategies employed by the Madonna and Lady Gaga brands. It examines the representations, ideologies and discourses produced by these strategies. To do so, the module focuses on three different perspectives and theoretical approaches: visual structures and the consciousness industry; celebrity production and management; narratives of authenticity and activism. The modules includes a visual analysis of the various semiotic structures found in adverts for the perfumes Truth or Dare and Lady Gaga Fame, and situates these campaigns in their historical and socio-cultural context. The module then analyses on how celebrity images are produced and managed, and the attendant issues of agency and power. Finally, the module examines how the performance of activism produces the ‘authentic’ neoliberal celebrity.

This module is part of the MA course in Communication, Culture and Media at Coventry University. For more information on the course: comcultmed.wordpress.com