COURSEWORK 1 This coursework task has two distinct components. You should include both in a single submission document with clear headings and subheadings.

COMPONENT A: Research Proposal: HOW DO SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS AFFECT COSMETIC CONSUMERS PREFERENCES? (word limit:1500)

In the final year of your degree programme, you will write a 10,000-word dissertation based on original research. In preparation, for this coursework component you must create the first version of your dissertation research proposal. This is very much a first draft: you will have the opportunity to develop your ideas and redraft your proposal several times before you begin writing next year. We’ll assess this proposal submission not as a finished product, but as evidence of your ability to think carefully and critically at this first stage about what you want to research, why you want to research it, and how you will go about doing so. We will evaluate the extent to which you successfully translate ideas from the lecture programme, module reading list and form your own further reading into ideas for exciting and original research projects of your own. Your research proposal should be organised as follows:

Overview and Research Question (100 words) |: Here you should offer a basic overview of what you plan to research. You should conclude this section with a clearly defined research question. A research Page 8 of 14 question is a clear statement of what it is that you hope to find out by conducting your project. The more precise you can be, the better.

• Research Context (700 words) : Here you must explain why the project you want to do is worth doing and why it matters. A short introduction should explain your interest in the topic. The rest of this section should be dedicated to outlining the current academic literature on your chosen topic to frame why you think your project is necessary. Use other module reading lists and the library catalogue to identify this academic literature. The key aim here is to explain what other researchers have already argued about your topic and how you hope to build upon or critique these arguments. Make full use of citation and remember to list your secondary sources in a bibliography.

• Methods and Sources (700 words) : For a research project to be viable, you must identify how you will collect the necessary information and evidence to support an argument. In semester two of this module, you will have the opportunity to attend three workshops focussed on different methods and sources for culture, film and media research. In this section of the proposal, you should identify which three of these methods/sources are the most relevant for your dissertation and why (you should choose one workshop from each group). Refer to the list of workshops on Moodle. To make your choices, you should consult the module bibliography which will help you to assess the benefits of different methods and sources. You should cite this academic literature in support of your choices.

WORKSHOP LIST (METHODS):

GROUP A A1 Ethnography (Pharmacy Building, Room A05)

Ethnography, especially participant observation, is a useful method for studying the workingpractices of the media and cultural industries, and for capturing real-life events among ordinary people. It helps researchers capture a range of data while taking part in social activity. It is a valuable method for recording how media participants think and talk about their work, observe unspoken practices and uncover formal and informal relationships between members of a media ecology. In the session you will learn how to select a suitable network or event (most likely a film or music festival, art exhibitions, theatre premiere or similar), conduct your observation, gain access, consider the ethical considerations and write up your findings as “written photographs” or “thick description.”A2 Virtual Ethnography (Law and Social Sciences Building, Room A03)A range of digital technologies permits researchers to embed themselves in and studycommunities that exist in virtual spaces. Here, researchers rely on observing and analysingtextual representations of the “online self” as opposed to face-to-face interactions especiallywhere data may not be possible to access in other ways. Moreover, virtual spaces provideopportunities to research interactions and phenomena that may not occur in physical spaces. Bythe end of this workshop, students will have a better understanding of how to make effective useof this research technique, of what counts as data, and of related ethical and contested issues.A3 Approaches to Screen Criticism (Pharmacy Building, Room A06)Film reviews, social-media postings and other print and online discourse constitute valuableevidence of how audiences engage with film and television programmes. These sources help usto understand, situate and interpret media reception and its mechanisms – for example, tasteformations and cultural discourses informing the classification and assessment of media texts.But how do we locate, categorise and analyse this evidence? This workshop will, firstly, addressvarious aspects of reception study, thinking about the venues in which screen criticism appears,and the formal and informal criteria writers and users abide by in producing that criticism.Secondly, this workshop will investigate the terms on which we can deploy such evidence, andwhat we can learn about media users, texts and more as a result. A4 Interviews (Psychology Building, Room B37)This workshop will introduce students to the practice of interviewing professionals about theirwork. It will examine when this method is appropriate to use (and not to use) and what the prosand cons of practitioner interviews are. Through practical exercises students will learn how gainaccess to, contact and approach media professionals. The workshop will also examine how todraw up and devise interview questions. The second workshop will build on the first and

approach how to conduct the actual interview. Using practical exercises students will gainexperience of what makes a good (and a bad) interview. The workshop will also address how toanalyse interview materials, drawing on recordings and transcripts of actual practitionerinterviews.A5 Live to Digital: The Immersive Experience Continuum (Teaching and LearningBuilding, Room D13)There has been a recent dramatic increase in the investment in experiential and technologicalinnovations that support ‘immersive’ participation by their audience. These range from thesignificant evolution of Live Cinema exhibition—cinema screenings accompanied by aparticipatory element such as singing, quoting, eating, dressing up etc. on the one hand and agiddying array of virtual technologies designed to immerse us in new stories and new spaces onthe other. These experiences share a common foregrounding of the quality of immersion—avery challenging phenomenon to capture for analysis. The first session will introduce students tothe emergent methodological frameworks being used to study this more ephemeral experientialdimension of cultural participation. In the second session, students will present pilot studies ofcontemporary immersive experiences.A6 Designing and Analysing Questionnaires (Teaching and Learning Building, RoomC12)This workshop will explore how to design, run and analyse a questionnaire. In the firstworkshop, we will discuss what makes a good (and bad) questionnaire and you will work insmall groups to design a questionnaire on a topic that interests you. You will then have a weekto recruit participants and collect data. The second workshop will focus on analysingquestionnaire data. It will explore various tools that can help with the analysis and guide youthrough the first steps of turning questionnaire data into an argument.A7 Social Media: Studying Twitter and Weibo (Teaching and Learning Building, RoomC15)In this workshop, students will learn the basics of conducting research into two of the world’smost popular social media platforms, where hundreds of millions of users engage in everythingfrom media fandom to personal brand building to political activism. Our everyday use of socialmedia can make these sites an appealing and seemingly simple grounds in which to work, yet inan academic context, this deceptive familiarity hides many issues. In addition to practicingeffective data collection and the essentials of platform, social network, and online discourseanalysis, we will discuss issues of privacy and ethics, highlight the problems of datafication,algorithms, bots and fake information, and censorship, and learn to critically engage withpopular narratives about social media and big data.

GROUP B B1 Auditory Analysis (Pharmacy Building, Room A05)Can we use our ears to analyse the world we live in? It’s not what most people usually think ofwhen they think of research, but the new and growing academic field of sound studiesemphasises the need to remain critical and alert about what we hear. Our media and culturallives are image saturated, of course they are. But aren’t they also sound-tracked by music,voice, and crackle, rumble, roar, and hum? What do these sounds mean? What do they want?What do they do? In these workshops we’ll put on our headphones, fire up some loudspeakers,and listen. You’ll be introduced to a variety of sound studies techniques for analysing sound,from audio ethnography to critical listening, from soundtrack analysis to voice research, all ofwhich place hearing and listening centre stage as methods for understanding media and culture.B2 Video Games (Laws and Social Sciences Building, Room A3)As the past two decades have witnessed the increasing economic as well as socio-culturalrelevance of video games within our current media landscape, game studies has grown into adynamic and thoroughly interdisciplinary field of study that bridges theory and practice,combining critical approaches informed by game design theory, literary theory, cultural studiesand media theory with empirical approaches that draw from cultural studies, sociology,psychology, and education. The first session will introduce students to the in- depth analysis ofvideo games as aesthetic artefacts and embodied experiences, with a particular focus oncontemporary “indie games.” During the second session, students will present their owncontextualized “close playings” of selected “indie games.”B3 Visual Analysis (Pharmacy Building, Room A06)Images are not merely a record of “reality,” they are a constructed reflection of culture. Visualscan shape our experiences in and perceptions of the world not only in art, photograph andvideo, but also in advertisement; branding; political communication, propaganda and caricature;data visualisation; and website design. By learning the methods of visual analysis and applyingthem to examples, this workshop will allow students to develop the skills and understandingneeded to research and work with a broad range of image material. We will explore potentialresearch questions around visual materials and also consider multi-method approaches.B4 Film Texts, Contexts and Paratexts (Psychology Building, Room B37)This workshop highlights some of the ways to conduct research into film at the historicalmoment of its production and circulation. Looking at specific case studies of British cinema, we

will explore how film can be studied in relation to the social, political and cultural currents of itstime. We will be looking specifically at the study of paratextual approaches to film research byexamining the various texts which surround the film text, such as marketing and publicitymaterials, reviews, and interviews. B5 Quantitative Content Analysis: Objectifying the Subjective (Teaching and LearningBuilding, Room D13)Quantitative content analysis (QCA) is a useful method of describing individual media texts(films, TV programmes, music, games), as well as spotting trends in groups of media texts (boxsets, TV series, film franchises, albums) that might not be apparent through other methods.QCA objectifies the (often subjective) attributes of media texts. This workshop discusses thebenefits of QCA. Using examples, you will learn how to identify, measure, categorise, andprioritise elements of media texts. In the second workshop, you will learn how to analyse yourdata and create visual representations, charts and graphs in order to support persuasivearguments.B6 Magazines (Teaching and Learning Building, Room C12)This workshop introduces students to the use of magazines as a research tool. Magazinesprovide a window into many issues that arise in culture and media, and can form an importantcomparative source material for researchers. Magazines as cultural artefacts, can showhistorical and contemporary cultural movements, as well as be a source of the culturalmovement themselves. Questions that this workshop will include will be advertising, theevolution and design of the format, alongside discussions on the constructions of gender, bodyimage, and lifestyles. This workshop will help students identify how to approach magazines foruse in their research projects, and how to locate the materials in archives and libraries andintegrate them as source material into their projects.B7 Newspapers (Teaching and Learning Building, Room C15)Newspapers can be incredibly useful resources when conducting research, and theseworkshops will help you to understand how you can access a wide variety of newspapers usingdigital resources through the library, such as LexisNexis and other archives. It will demonstratehow to conduct searches for specific newspapers, time periods or topics, and how to filterresults in order to ensure they are relevant. The workshop will also train students in how toapproach newspapers as sources, as they have particular agendas that need to be taken intoaccount when used in academic research.GROUP CC1 Critical Discourse Analysis (Pharmacy Building, Room A05)Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a methodology for examining language, ideology, andpower in “texts.” Texts can refer to any number of socially produced items, from news mediaarticles to advertising, from social media to political speeches. Researchers analyse the

linguistic features of texts to draw out what an author says, how and, importantly, why they sayit, with the text being considered in its broader context. For example, a government ministermight say that “the NHS will be improved by making efficiency savings,” whilst opposed activistsmight say “the NHS is being forced to make damaging cuts.” In these workshops, we willconsider how meaning is created in and by texts and apply this to a number of examples. C2 Focus Groups (Laws and Social Sciences Building, Room A3)Focus groups involve interviewing many people at once. They are useful for understanding notonly how but why a selected group of people make sense of cultural and media messages.Focus groups are a qualitative method that can be used in combination with surveys,questionnaires or semi-structured interviews to provide detailed information about particularaudience-focussed questions. The workshops will cover how to choose and recruit your group/s,how to choose a location, how to moderate the sessions, what questions to ask and how torecord and analyse your data. The sessions will involve practical tasks in which you will bothparticipate in and moderate your own focus group.C3 Film Consumption and Cultural Value (Pharmacy Building, Room A06)Notions of value permeate our understanding of the consumption of media texts. Oscars (andtheir nemesis, the Razzies) and film festival awards, for example, provide us valuable clues onan economy of prestige that regulates audiences’ reception practices and taste regimes. Howdo researchers approach this subjective notion of ‘cultural value’ to study film consumption?Addressing this question, the first part of the workshop gives students the opportunity tofamiliarise themselves with key terms and concepts around cultural value, and how these canbe used to investigate film’s circulation and cultural contexts. During the second part of theworkshop, students will apply these concepts to discuss reception and consumption of particularfilmic texts.C4 Material Culture (Psychology Building, Room B37)This workshop will offer students an introduction to some of the approaches in material culture.The workshop will address some of the theoretical frameworks common in the study of materialobjects, addressing the roles and meanings that objects can accrue. Taking examples fromsocieties around the world, this workshop will introduce some of the ways materials interact ineveryday lives and how the objects themselves can influence relationships, in both intended and

unexpected ways. By the end of this workshop students will have begun to develop a workingknowledge of how to approach theoretical frameworks, and what potential sources ofinformation can be used alongside material culture in their own research.C5 Using History and Archives (Teaching and Learning Building, Room D13)This workshop will introduce students to the ways in which historical and contemporaryexperiences intersect as researchers extract meaning from sources in archives. Students willlearn how researchers can make effective use of archives to pursue supplementary informationand additional perspectives about their data from people, objects and artefacts that existed inthe past. By the end of the session, students will not only have a better understanding of whatarchives are, how they come into being, and why they are useful, but also appreciate the hugesignificance of being attentive to unexpected leads or chance encounters and fascinatingdiscoveries in archives that can enrich a research project through rendering it more interesting,robust and convincing. C6 Trawling the Net: Temporal issues in Internet Research (Teaching and LearningBuilding, Room C12)They say that the internet never forgets, but how do you know where to look for the material ordata you need? This workshop deals specifically with temporal complexities of internetresearch, with two particular focuses. The first session deals with searching for material whichhave seemingly disappeared from the internet, whether due to the sites no longer existing or ifthe content has been removed, banned or censored. The second session relates to socialmedia and chat apps data, using a mixed-method approach into researching into specific pastevents or for longitudinal study purposes. The workshop will also cover issues surroundingsurveillance, ethics and consent.C7 Narrative Analysis (Teaching and Learning Building, Room C15)Narratives are everywhere. Whether we are looking at an advert, visiting a museum, reading anovel, watching a TV programme, playing a video game or even considering our ownbackgrounds and identities, we are experiencing and constructing narratives. This workshop willintroduce students to key concepts of narrative analysis across different media. We will exploreexamples of narratives from more or less every aspect of our day-to-day lives. The workshopwill allow students to familiarise themselves with narrative analysis and encourage them toapply their critical reading skills on a variety of examples.

MODULE READING LIST

The Routledge handbook of magazine research: the future of the magazine form-Book by David Abrahamson; Marcia Prior-Miller c2015

Media and communication research methods: an introduction to qualitative and

quantitative approaches Book by Arthur Asa Berger 2000

The craft of research - Book by Wayne C. Booth; ProQuest (Firm) 2016

Practical Research Methods for Media and Cultural Studies: Making People

Count - Book by Messenger Davies, Julia

Film analysis: a Norton reader - Book -by Jeffrey Geiger; R. L. Rutsky 2013

Media and communication research methods - Book by Anders Hansen; David

Machin 2013

Media industries: history, theory, and method -Book by Jennifer Holt; Alisa

Perren 2009 Doing media research: an introduction - Book by Susanna Hornig Priest 2009], c2010

Discourse and digital practices: doing discourse analysis in the digital age- Book by Rodney H. Jones; Alice Chik; Christoph A. Hafner 2015

Textual analysis: a beginner's guide - Book by Alan McKee 2003

How to watch television - Book by Ethan Thompson; Jason Mittell c2013

How to read a film: movies, media, and beyond : art, technology, language,

history, theory-Book by James Monaco c2009

Research methods for cultural studies-Book by Michael Pickering; ebrary, Inc c2008

Advances in visual methodology - Book by Sarah Pink 2012

Digital method - Book by Richard Rogers c2013 Visual methodologies: an introduction to researching with visual materials -

Book by Gillian Rose 2012 Doing research in cultural studies: an introduction to classical and new

methodological approaches-Book by Paula Saukko 2003

How to do media & cultural studies-Book by Jane C. Stokes 2003

Re-viewing television history: critical issues in television historiography-Book by

Helen Wheatley c2007

Doing discourse analysis: methods for studying action in talk and text-Book by Linda A. Wood; Rolf O. Kroger 2000

COMPONENT B:Lecture Engagement Task (word limit:1000)

As part of the lecture programme in Semester One, you will be asked to contribute to the ‘Lecture Discussion Forum’ on Moodle. You will be encouraged to post questions/thoughts during and between lectures and to respond to questions/thoughts raised by other students. These should relate directly to points raised in the lecture sessions and should be considered, thoughtful interventions. You must participate in the discussion forum DURING and BETWEEN lectures. There will be clear areas set out for forum contributions. Your contributions to the forum should take place at the appropriate time (i.e. during the relevant lecture or in the week following the relevant lecture). You must keep up with contributions during the teaching term. The forum will close after the final week of the teaching term.

In this coursework assessment task, you should identify ONE example of a question/thought that you posted,

and ONE example of an instance where you responded to a question/thought raised by another user.

Insert a screenshot of your contributions in your submission document (these should include your name and the date and time of the contribution and do not contribute towards the word count)

Offer critical reflections on the points that you raised in these screenshots in the form of a reflective commentary. Further develop the points that you were trying to make. You may make additional reference to your other forum contributions in support of your reflections. We will judge the quality of your contribution to the module over the course of the semester and will as such take account of your overall contribution to the online forum in our assessment of this task. To help guide your reflections, please comment directly on the following question: How has your view of research changed over the course of the lecture programme? Make use of scholarly literature from the module reading list to develop and support your ideas and include references to other scholarly literature where necessary to support/illustrate your points. Use full citation norms and include a bibliography.

Since we are explicitly assessing change over time, i.e. your intellectual development over the course of the semester, try to show evidence in your submission that you contributed to the forum consistently over the semester, i.e. not just at the end. (If you and others post questions and responses only at the end of the lecture programme, rather than week by week, interactive discussion won’t really occur.) Although you are limited to including screen shots of just one question and one response, you are free to refer to other interactions on the forum in the rest of your submission text to give the wider context of your engagement. This will help markers gauge the consistency and depth of your forum contributions.

Submission requirements state that you should include one example of a question you asked and one example of a reply you made. When you include these in your submission, you should show the wider context of your contributions, e.g. the question to which you responded, and the responses that your question or point elicited from other students. If your questions/responses sparked further discussion, this will indicate a high quality of engagement and contribution we will likely reward in marking.

The format you choose for the presentation of your final submission is up to you, but you should be sure to make clear how your engagement with the lecture programme and discussion board has developed your understanding of research practices.