Working with Digital Media

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4
• Convenor: Dr Scott Rodgers
• Tutors: Bea Moyes, Dr Bartek Dziadosz
• Assessment: a storyboard (30%) and 3-5-minute desktop documentary plus 800-1000-word critical reflection (70%)

In this module you will become familiar with the basic practical and conceptual dimensions of working with digital media. We will place an emphasis on digital content creation and storytelling, broadly defined, from images and sound to generative AI and data visualisation. You will not only consider examples of, and experiment with, creative digital media skills and outputs, but also level up your generic yet essential skills in digital authoring, editing and analysis (e.g. querying and prompting, file conversion and compression, and using presets and templates).

Our approach will be practice-based, meaning you will have the opportunity to not only think about digital media, but also to think through and with digital media. We will consider how a growing number of digital devices, platforms, services, apps and models both support and challenge media production and consumption. Through hands-on experimentation, you will develop a better appreciation of basic creative techniques and outputs, which you may then further develop in intermediate and advanced modules. At the same time, this experimentation will help you better appreciate how and why scholars (including you) theorise, research and use digital media.

Indicative syllabus

• Introduction: Thinking through digital media
• Images still and moving
• Sound recording and sampling
• Design templates
• Generative AI
• Workshop 1: Planning a desktop documentary
• Immersive media
• Memes and remix
• Data visualisation
• Workshop 2: Constructing and completing a desktop documentary

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• apply key digital media concepts and theories to the creative production and critical consumption of digital content and experiences
• demonstrate a critical awareness of how different digital platforms and tools influence creative practice, labour relations and social networks
• analyse models of ownership, copyright and surveillance engendered by contemporary digital media
• demonstrate problem solving with different digital tools and affordances in order to tell stories or convey information
• identify how theoretical concepts and practice-based work are interconnected and reflect on these interconnections in audiovisual and/or written form
• demonstrate basic familiarity with various creative digital media skills and outputs, including screen capture, still and video photography, sound recording, design templates, generative AI, immersive media (e.g. VR/AR), data visualisation, memes and mashups
• demonstrate basic literacy of generic skills in digital authoring, editing and analysis including querying and prompting, file conversion and compression, and using presets and templates.