ANTH3621: How We Connect: Communication and Media
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Unit of study_

ANTH3621: How We Connect: Communication and Media

2025 unit information

We are all interconnected, and so we can’t not communicate. If people depend on others then we depend on languages and other shared resources for understanding each other. Many contemporary issues in the social sciences turn on the patterns, politics, and consequences of how people communicate and how people’s lives and experiences are mediated. In this unit of study, we explore language as action, the social life of media texts, and the politics of symbols, representations, and knowledges through the study of ethnographies of semiotic systems, and processes that enable people to express themselves and their worlds.

Unit details and rules

Managing faculty or University school:

Arts and Social Sciences

Study level Undergraduate
Academic unit Anthropology
Credit points 6
Prerequisites:
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12 credit points at 2000 level in Anthropology
Corequisites:
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None
Prohibitions:
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None
Assumed knowledge:
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None

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

  • LO1. Understand how anthropology contrasts with other studies of communication
  • LO2. Demonstrate familiarity with major theories of communication and how they can inform ethnographic analysis
  • LO3. Be able to analyse systems of communication as social practices and as sites of political struggle
  • LO4. Be able to draw independent conclusions about the implications of communicative practice for social dynamics, inequalities, and forms of domination
  • LO5. Be able to evaluate scholarly research in relation broader scholarly debates among distinct perspectives on society

Unit availability

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Session MoA ?  Location Outline ? 
Semester 1 2025
Normal day Camperdown / Darlington, Sydney
Session MoA ?  Location Outline ? 
Semester 1 2024
Normal day Camperdown / Darlington, Sydney

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Modes of attendance (MoA)

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