Histories of Communication COMMS5007

  • Academic Session: 2025-26
  • School: School of Critical Studies
  • Credits: 20
  • Level: Level 5 (SCQF level 11)
  • Typically Offered: Either Semester 1 or Semester 2
  • Available to Visiting Students: No
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No
  • Curriculum For Life: No

Short Description

This course examines the evolving forms and genres of communication across history and geography, beginning with inscriptions on stone and wax tablets and ending with file transfers and email. Combining current research in media and information studies with materialist approaches to bureaucracy and 'paperwork', we will consider how the development of new systems and technologies for storing, organizing and transmitting information changes communication landscapes, affording new possibilities for both controlling and disrupting how we communicate across national boundaries. Our aim throughout the course will be apply insights from analysing past and current media transformations to enable us to shape the future of global communication.

Timetable

10x 2hr timetabled on-campus seminar

 

This is one of the MSc options in Communications and may not run every year. The options that are running this session are available on MyCampus.

Requirements of Entry

Standard entry to Masters at College level.

Excluded Courses

None

Co-requisites

None

Assessment

10 minute presentation, typically as part of a group project (50%)

1000-word essay (25%)

1000-word learning journal (25%)

Course Aims

This course aims to:

•  introduce the dominant forms and genres of communication and information management in the past and today

• identify how and why the material forms of communication have changed over time 

• isolate the logistical and ideological effects of communication genres within specific organizations and communities

•  enable critical reflection on how forms and genres of communication structure thought and behaviour

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course, students will be able to: 

• understand the evolution of communication genres in relation to structures of information management more broadly

• analyse how the material forms of communication shape institutional, national and multinational communication networks

• make historically informed arguments about the forms of modern communication media

• work collaboratively to propose innovative forms of communication that support a more equitable vision of global communication

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.