Bachelor of Behavioural Science - Postsecondary Education Quality ...

Upper
or
Lower
Lower
Lower
Course Title
Role of Media in
Society
Science and
Pseudoscience
Calendar Course Description
computer. The explosion in remix and mashup is an exciting and
rich new creative mode, but it also raises a number of politicallycharged
questions: Who owns creative work Who benefits from
our current legal system of intellectual property rights Should
we accept works built on plagiarism, however artful they may
seem, as serious artistic endeavors Is it necessary to know
one‘s sources fully in their original historical contexts in order to
appreciate, understand, or create truly meaningful remix art
What do we owe to the creators of the past whose work we
appropriate and remix This class will place contemporary
artistic practices of remix and mashup within their historical
context, looking at how variation and adaptation have been
practiced (and often condemned) in the Western tradition. We
will explore the use of remix-like forms of appropriation by 20th
century avant-garde artists and writers, and we will focus on hip
hop musical practice (and its antecedents and offshoots).
Finally, students will
create their own remix in one of the arts, and will critically
engage in analysis of their own creative work as remixers.
In this course, students will be introduced to the historical
foundations and purposes of modern media beginning with the
emergence of rudimentary newspapers as purveyors of shipping
schedules and trade data and continuing through the rise of the
free press as a bulwark of democratic societies. Emphasis will
be given to examining the role of modern media as witness to
events of historical moment and in exposing corrupt practices
and violations of the public interest in both government and
private-sector contexts. Media will also be positioned as
commercial enterprises with an historical interest in scandal and
subject to their own deviations from their stated mandates to
report with impartiality and balance. Contemporary
developments to be analyzed include the impact on traditional
media roles from 24-hour cable news, online news services and
the increasing convergence between news media and the other
industries of popular culture.
Science permeates our lives with indispensable technologies,
cures and discoveries – both subtle and profound. Our
understanding of the natural world has never been greater, yet,
paradoxically, distrust of science has grown and the ideas of
science have been intermingled with myths or distorted into bad
science. Strangely, one of scientific technology‘s most
conspicuous successes, the internet, has become the greatest
source of misinformation. Pseudoscientific claims are all around
us, and old myths still persist in our information age.
In this course we will study many of the amazing claims made in
the name of science and analyze them using the guiding
principles of science and scientific methodology. From astrology
Bachelor of Behavioural Science Section D, Page 89