Writer’s choice of one of the questions

 
Choose ONE question from the list below. Essays should be 2500 words in length. DO NOT write significantly more or less than 2500 words. Use contemporary examples to support your argument.
1-To what extent do media have effects? Discuss with reference to different behaviourist perspectives on the media-audience relationship.

2-‘The medium is the message’ (McLuhan 1964). Explain McLuhan’s statement in relation to modernity and evaluate its usefulness for understanding TWO media technologies.

3-Assess the strengths and weaknesses of different structuralist theories in their capacity to shed light on media production and consumption?

4-To what extent has the rise of communications media affected patterns of social interaction? Consider at least THREE interactionist perspectives in your answer.

5-Discuss the ways in which feminist theories have informed a contemporary understanding of media and gender. Consider at least TWO feminist perspectives in your answer.

6-“The Orient that appears in Orientalism is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire” (Said 1995: 202-203). In what ways might Orientalism still persist in today’s political economy of global media?

7-‘Today’s media-saturated, information society is best theorised in terms of postmodernity.’ Critically respond to this statement by evaluating and comparing at least TWO postmodernist perspectives.

8-“Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry” (Fiske 1989: 24). Critically explore different arguments concerning the power of media consumerism.

9-Critically evaluate whether media technologies make consumers ‘redundant as producers’ (Adorno and Horkheimer 1973) or enable consumer empowerment given their mass reproducibility (Benjamin 1973).