DPHU1007 Media, Society and Politics
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · T3 2026DPHU1007 Overview
- Term 3, 2026
- UNSW College delivery
- Level 1 Diploma
- 6 units of credit
- In-class assessment
DPHU1007 Media, Society and Politics is a Term 3, 2026 course listed in the UNSW Diploma in Media and delivered by UNSW College on behalf of UNSW Sydney; the same course runs as MEDA1307 in the UNSW College Diploma of Media. It is a Level 1 (Diploma) course worth 6 units of credit with no assumed knowledge.
- Assessed by Concept model, thesis, essay and viva
- Every answer needs Two concepts and a structure of power
- Hardest step Moving from description to analysis of power
- How to prepare Weekly handwritten paragraphs on real media
How DPHU1007 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Concept Play Dough Visualisation / Defence | 25% | Week 5 tutorial: group play dough model of a course concept (10%) and an individual 40-minute handwritten defence (15%) |
| Thesis Statement | 15% | Week 8 tutorial: individual thesis statement in an introductory paragraph, 150 to 200 words handwritten in 30 minutes |
| Essay | 30% | Week 11 tutorial: new thesis statement, two body paragraphs and a conclusion, handwritten in 2 hours with handwritten notes allowed |
| Viva Voce Essay Q&A | 30% | Week 12 tutorial: 7 minutes of teacher questions on your own Assessment 3 essay |
| Assessment Completion · hurdle | 0% | Hurdle: failure to complete and submit all assessments as required results in an Unsatisfactory Fail |
Weights are from the Term 3, 2026 course outline. The UNSW Handbook entry for 2026 describes a different design (an Essay worth 40%, quizzes worth 30% and a Pitch worth 30%); this guide follows the Term 3 outline published on Moodle, which is the document your class is assessed against. Each weighted task must also be completed, because missing any assessment results in an Unsatisfactory Fail. Attendance also counts: the Moodle page expects 100% attendance and requires at least 80% attendance at classes, and students below 80% without evidence of special circumstances may fail the course.
What DPHU1007 covers
The course moves from the language of discourse and the form of media, through audiences and signs, to the power of platforms, ideology and algorithms, and ends with the public sphere. Each chapter adds one set of concepts that the thesis, essay and viva ask you to apply to a case and connect to a structure of power.
Discourse and the Media, Society and Politics Lens
Hall on discourse, the media, society and politics triangle, and how a way of talking shapes what is possibleThe opening week sets out the relationship the whole course studies: how information is mediated between social, cultural and political institutions. Its first analytical tool is discourse.
- Media, society and politics: three institutions whose relationship the course examines through mediated information.
- Discourse: patterned talk about a topic with consequences for who is believed and what can be done.
- Ruling in and ruling out: the two halves of Hall's definition, and why the second half carries the analysis.
- Excluded alternatives: naming the way of talking a text makes difficult is the core analytical move.
- Discourse and structures of power: wording that normalises an arrangement in which one group benefits.
- Course worksheet: concept, definition and personal example as a revision routine from Week 1.
Medium Theory: Figure, Ground and Extension
McLuhan through Strate, the medium as message, figure and ground, extensions and amputations, and media environmentsWeek 2 reads Lance Strate's article on Marshall McLuhan's phrase the medium is the message, with a podcast that talks through the argument.
- The medium is the message: a technology's existence reshapes social life more than any one use of it.
- Figure and ground: content draws attention while the medium stays in the unnoticed background.
- Extensions and amputations: each medium extends a human capacity and weakens another, such as memory.
- Nested media: the content of a medium is always another, older medium.
- Media environments: oral, scribal, print and electronic settings that organise societies differently.
- Context: Postman's warning that electronic media can create a context of no context.
Audience Reception: Encoding and Decoding
Hall's encoding and decoding, dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings, and the hegemonic viewpointWeek 3 shifts attention from producers to audiences. Hall's encoding and decoding model, quoted in the course list, holds that there is never solely one received message: audiences add meaning and rebuild what they receive.
- Encoding: the producer builds a preferred meaning into the text through choices of image, sound and words.
- Decoding: audiences reconstruct the message, so reception never simply copies intention.
- Dominant reading: the audience accepts the preferred meaning as natural.
- Negotiated reading: the audience accepts the general frame but adapts parts to its own situation.
- Oppositional reading: the audience rejects the preferred meaning and reads the text against itself.
- Hegemonic viewpoint: the common sense that makes the dominant reading feel like no choice at all.
Semiotics: Denotation, Connotation and Myth
Sign, signifier and signified, Barthes' two orders of meaning, myth at the level of language and the level of mythWeek 4 introduces semiotics, the study of signs, through the first chapter of Gaines' Media Literacy and Semiotics. A sign joins a signifier, the material form you perceive, to a signified, the concept it calls up.
- Sign: the union of a perceivable form and the concept it calls up.
- Signifier and signified at the level of language: the literal image and what it depicts.
- Signifier and signified at the level of myth: the whole sign carrying a cultural idea.
- Denoted meaning: the first-order, basic meaning a camera would record.
- Connoted meaning: the second-order cultural meaning a shared audience recognises.
- Myth: a cultural construction that appears as universal truth and serves particular interests.
Platform Power and Data Capitalism
Political economy of the media, data as raw material, surveillance capitalism and the double bind of participationWeek 5 applies the political economy of the media to social platforms. The question is how ownership, profit and markets shape what media do, and the reading is Cohen's article on the political economy of Facebook.
- Political economy of the media: how ownership, funding and profit shape media content and form.
- Data capitalism: user activity treated as the natural source of a valuable raw material.
- Surveillance capitalism: profit from monitoring and modifying behaviour without negotiation.
- The double bind: privacy weighed against community when opting out has social costs.
- Dynamic pricing and data-driven lending as examples of discriminatory uses of data.
- Neoliberal discourse: presenting market choice as the natural answer to social questions.
Social Media, Ideology and Interpellation
Ideology, cultural hegemony, Althusser's interpellation, becoming a user and Lovink on social media as ideologyWeek 6 asks why life on platforms feels natural.
- Ideology: shared, coherent beliefs linked to the use of power in society.
- Cultural hegemony: the process by which unequal structures come to seem normal and natural.
- Interpellation: being hailed by an idea and recognising oneself in the role it offers.
- Becoming a user: the profile as the first step that enables profiling and targeting.
- Social media as ideology: Lovink's claim that platforms shape how we see the world.
- Refusing the hail: oppositional readers show that interpellation can fail.
Structures of Power in Media Analysis
Patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity, racism, ableism, ageism and eurocentricity as the course defines themEvery thesis and essay task in this course asks you to refer to a structure of power, and the rubric bands check for it.
- Structures of power: social organisation that favours some groups, reinforced by institutions and relations.
- Patriarchy and heteronormativity: gender and sexuality norms presented as natural defaults.
- Capitalism: private ownership and profit as the organising principle of production.
- Racism and eurocentricity: hierarchies of race and culture with one group treated as the norm.
- Ableism and ageism: prejudice that treats some bodies and ages as inferior or problematic.
- Support or challenge: the two directions the thesis and essay questions ask you to weigh.
Affordances and the Attention Economy
Low-level and high-level affordances, persistence, replicability, scalability, searchability and attentionWeek 8 studies what platforms make possible. The reading is the SAGE handbook chapter on the affordances of social media platforms.
- Affordance: what a technology makes possible or easy for its users.
- Low-level affordances: material features such as buttons, screens and interface tools.
- High-level affordances: persistence, replicability, scalability and searchability as conditions of networked life.
- Perception: expectations about a technology shape behaviour alongside its design.
- Non-neutral mediation: technologies enlarge some actions and restrict others.
- Attention economy: platforms compete for scarce attention and profit from engagement.
Agenda Setting, Priming and Framing
Agenda setting, priming as benchmarks, framing effects, macro and micro perspectives and political agencyWeek 9 studies how trending news shapes the agenda. Agenda setting concerns which issues the news makes prominent.
- Agenda setting: news prominence shapes which issues people think about.
- Priming: news suggests which issues should serve as benchmarks for judging leaders.
- Framing: the presentation of an issue shapes how it is defined and evaluated.
- Framing effect: equivalent descriptions lead to systematically different decisions.
- Macro and micro perspectives: frames in news culture and frames in individual judgement.
- Political agency: how news processes widen or narrow what citizens feel able to do.
Digital Divides and the Algorithmic Black Box
First, second and third level divides, inequality factors, algorithmic opacity and discourses about algorithmsWeek 10 asks who benefits from digital media.
- Digital inequalities: gaps in access and use that reflect long-standing social inequalities.
- First-level divide: unequal access to devices and connection.
- Second-level divide: unequal skills and ways of using technology.
- Third-level divide: unequal ability to convert use into offline benefits.
- Algorithmic black box: known inputs and outputs, hidden inner workings.
- Discourses about algorithms: claims of impartiality that protect automated decisions from critique.
The Public Sphere, Journalism and Democracy
Habermas' public sphere, Dean's critique, commercial and platform pressures on journalism, and networks and democracyWeek 11 brings the course to democracy. The course quotation from Habermas describes the public sphere as a realm where issues become visible to all and take shape through discussion among citizens as equals.
- Public sphere: Habermas' ideal of open, visible debate among citizens as equals.
- Dean's critique: publicity as an ideological assumption rather than a guarantee of reason.
- Commercial pressure: private media and the tendency toward monopoly.
- Platform power: technology companies shaping public conversation and journalism's place in it.
- Truth and speed: false information spreading at scale on dominant platforms.
- Networks and democracy: liberation for users is not the same as democratisation for society.
The course outline describes its focus as the complex relationship between media, society and politics, examining how information is mediated between social, cultural and political institutions, and it develops a conceptual framework for analysing a changing technological and regulatory environment.
Teaching combines a weekly two-hour lecture with a two-and-a-half-hour tutorial, and each workshop discusses the previous week's lecture. The weekly topics build a toolkit of media studies concepts. Discourse opens the course. Medium theory follows, through Lance Strate's reading of McLuhan, then audience reception and Hall's encoding and decoding, and semiotics with Barthes' denotation, connotation and myth.
The middle weeks turn to platforms: the political economy of the media, data and surveillance capitalism, ideology, cultural hegemony and interpellation. After the flexibility week come affordances and the attention economy, agenda setting, priming and framing, digital divides and the algorithmic black box, and finally the public sphere and journalism.
Throughout, students are asked to link concepts to a structure of power such as capitalism, patriarchy, racism, heteronormativity, ableism, ageism or eurocentricity. Assessment is entirely in class and handwritten or spoken, and AI tools cannot be used. The tasks move from showing a concept visually, to writing a thesis statement, to a full essay, and then to defending that essay in a short viva.
To pass, students need an overall mark of at least 50 percent, an attempt at every task and a genuine attempt at each, and the Moodle page also requires attendance at a minimum of 80% of classes, warning that students below 80% without evidence of special circumstances may fail the course.
This guide follows the same sequence: each chapter defines one week's concepts with the short quotations the course provides, works a complete paragraph on a new case, and ends with practice questions and model answers.
Worked example · free
Building a thesis paragraph from a stimulus
- +1Restate the question: does the advertisement support or challenge a structure of power in the contemporary media landscape?
- +1Define two concepts briefly. Interpellation is the process by which ideology hails people into an identity; surveillance capitalism draws profit from monitoring and modifying behaviour (Zuboff 2016).
- +1Set the scope: the caption, the family image and the recommendation feature promoted in the advertisement.
- +1Thesis: the advertisement supports capitalism by hailing viewers as a contented family whose evenings are best organised by the platform, turning household routines into behavioural data.
Key terms
- Discourse
- An organised way of talking about a topic that rules in some statements and rules out others.
- Medium theory
- The study of how a medium's own characteristics shape perception and social life, apart from its content.
- Encoding and decoding
- Hall's model in which producers encode a preferred meaning and audiences decode it in different ways.
- Connoted meaning
- The second-order cultural meaning attached to what an image or word literally shows.
- Surveillance capitalism
- Profit drawn from the unilateral surveillance and modification of human behaviour.
- Interpellation
- Althusser's term for ideology hailing people into an identity they recognise as their own.
- High-level affordance
- A condition a platform enables, such as persistence, replicability, scalability or searchability.
- Framing effect
- A change in judgement caused by equivalent descriptions of the same facts.
- Algorithmic black box
- An automated system whose inputs and outputs are known while its inner workings stay hidden.
- Public sphere
- Habermas' ideal of a space where citizens make issues visible and debate them as equals.
- Structure of power
- A social arrangement that gives some groups more power than others, reinforced by institutions and relations.
DPHU1007 FAQ
How is Media, Society and Politics assessed in Term 3, 2026?
The course outline lists four weighted tasks: the Concept Play Dough Visualisation and Defence at 25%, the Thesis Statement at 15%, the Essay at 30% and the Viva Voce Essay Q&A at 30%. A separate 0% hurdle requires every assessment to be completed and submitted.
Can I use AI tools for any assessment?
No. Every task in the outline sits in AI Category 1, where AI tools cannot be used, and the tasks are supervised in class. Using generative AI output in a submission is treated as academic misconduct under the College's rules.
What does every thesis and essay response need to include?
The thesis and essay rubrics reward a direct response to the question, use of the stimulus, at least two course concepts and a reference to a structure of power. The essay adds two body paragraphs, a conclusion and Harvard in-text references to course readings or your own research.
What happens in the viva voce?
In your Week 12 tutorial the teacher asks questions about the concepts, logical arguments and supporting evidence in your Week 11 essay. You have 7 minutes, and the rubric scores the relevance of your answers, your understanding and how persuasively you show ownership of the essay.
What are the passing conditions for the course?
The outline sets three conditions together: an overall mark of at least 50 percent, an attempt at every assessment, and a genuine attempt that addresses all required sections. Missing any of them leads to an Unsatisfactory Fail grade even with a passing overall mark.
The Moodle page adds an attendance condition: you are expected to attend 100% of classes and must attend at least 80% of them, and students below 80% without evidence of special circumstances may fail the course.
Which readings matter most for the essay?
The essay concepts are drawn from the course concept list, and the course provides a list of academic quotations from the weekly readings and lectures. Readings include Strate on McLuhan, Gaines on semiotics, Cohen on Facebook, Lovink on social media ideology, van Gorp on framing, Mansell on inequality and Fenton on new media and democracy.
Questions students ask in each DPHU1007 chapter
- What does discourse mean in media studies?
- Discourse is an organised way of talking about a topic. Following Hall, it defines which statements sound acceptable and intelligible, and it limits other ways of speaking or acting, so it shapes knowledge and behaviour rather than simply describing them. Chapter 01 · Discourse and the Media, Society and Politics Lens
- What does 'the medium is the message' mean?
- McLuhan argued that a technology's presence changes how people perceive, relate and organise society more deeply than any particular content it carries. The automobile reshaped cities and politics whatever any single trip was for. Chapter 02 · Medium Theory: Figure, Ground and Extension
- What is the difference between encoding and decoding?
- Encoding is what producers do when they build a preferred meaning into a text. Decoding is what audiences do when they interpret it. Hall's point is that the two processes are separate, so the received meaning can differ from the intended one. Chapter 03 · Audience Reception: Encoding and Decoding
- What is the difference between denotation and connotation?
- Denotation is the first-order meaning, what an image literally shows. Connotation is the second-order meaning, the cultural associations a shared audience attaches to it, as Barthes' terms are summarised in the course quotation from Curtin. Chapter 04 · Semiotics: Denotation, Connotation and Myth
- What is the political economy of the media?
- It is an approach that asks how ownership, funding and the pursuit of profit shape what media produce and how they work. Applied to platforms, it starts by asking who pays for a free service and what is sold in return. Chapter 05 · Platform Power and Data Capitalism
- What is interpellation in simple terms?
- It is the process by which ideology calls out to people and they answer by recognising themselves in the offered identity. Creating a profile on a platform is the course's example: the user takes up a role before thinking about it. Chapter 06 · Social Media, Ideology and Interpellation
- What counts as a structure of power in this course?
- The course defines it as social organisation that gives some groups more power than others, reinforced by institutions and social relations. Its list covers patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity, racism, ableism, ageism and eurocentricity. Chapter 07 · Structures of Power in Media Analysis
- What is the difference between low-level and high-level affordances?
- Low-level affordances are material features such as buttons and screens. High-level affordances are the wider conditions they enable, such as persistence or scalability, which shape how people communicate over time. Chapter 08 · Affordances and the Attention Economy
- How is agenda setting different from framing?
- Agenda setting concerns which issues receive attention. Framing concerns how a chosen issue is defined, explained and evaluated. A story can put housing on the agenda and still frame it as a problem of investors or of planning rules. Chapter 09 · Agenda Setting, Priming and Framing
- What are the three levels of the digital divide?
- Van Deursen and Helsper describe a first level of unequal access, a second level of unequal skills and uses, and a third level of unequal capacity to turn internet use into favourable offline outcomes. Chapter 10 · Digital Divides and the Algorithmic Black Box
- What is the public sphere?
- In the course quotation from Habermas, it is a realm where issues become visible to all and are shaped through discussion among citizens competing as equals. It works as a standard for judging how well media support democracy. Chapter 11 · The Public Sphere, Journalism and Democracy
How to prepare for the assessments
Keep a three-column concept sheet that copies the course worksheet: concept, definition and an example of your own. Add one short quotation from the course list beside each definition, with its Harvard citation, because the essay rewards accurate in-text referencing. Each week, choose one advertisement, post or news story and write a four-sentence paragraph: concept, concrete detail, analysis and structure of power.
By Week 8 you will have enough paragraphs to rehearse the thesis task under a 30-minute timer, and by Week 11 you can practise a full essay in two hours with a single page of your own handwritten notes. For the viva, ask a friend to question you on your essay for seven minutes and answer aloud, explaining why you chose each concept and each detail.
Revisit the flexibility week as the course suggests: review, reflect on your progress and refine your notes before the second half of the term.
