CMB100 Hosted Media Forms and Cultures
To view more information for this unit, select Unit Outline from the list below. Please note the teaching period for which the Unit Outline is relevant.
| Unit code: | CMB100 |
|---|---|
| Credit points: | 12 |
| Timetable | Details in HiQ, if available |
| Availabilities |
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Unit Outline: Semester 2 2027, Kelvin Grove, Internal
| Unit code: | CMB100 |
|---|---|
| Credit points: | 12 |
Overview
Hosted media is a central feature of contemporary media, including YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, livestreams, TikTok, and creator-led brands. Although shaped by platforms, hosted media is defined by distinct formats, styles, rhythms, and modes of address. Communication professionals need to understand how it organises content, creative practice, and audience connection, and how it extends and transforms earlier forms such as broadcasting, publishing, magazines, and documentary.
In this unit you will develop skills to critically examine the forms, content, and cultures of hosted media. Weekly topics explore genres, personas, narrative structures, publishing rhythms, and audience relationships across media environments. You will analyse continuities and changes between hosted media and legacy forms, examining what carries over from earlier media and what shifts through creator-led publishing, ongoing audience interaction, and platform-shaped circulation.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:
- Identify and describe the distinctive forms, genres, and modes of address that characterise hosted media across different platforms and creator environments in comparison with earlier media forms, explaining key continuities and discontinuities in format, authorship, audience relationship, and distribution.
- Compare how platform affordances shape the production, presentation, circulation, and reception of hosted media content, and evaluate how creator practices, audience interaction, and platform conventions influence the development of hosted media cultures.
- Communicate critical analysis of hosted media texts, creators, and formats using appropriate concepts from media and communication studies.
- Demonstrate professional communication skills (spoken, written, and mediated) and effective qualities of leadership.
Content
This unit may address:
- The forms, genres, and styles of contemporary hosted media
- Creator voice, persona, seriality, and audience address
- The relationships between hosted media and earlier media forms such as broadcasting, publishing, commentary, and documentary
- Platform affordances and how they shape content production, circulation, and reception
- Audience interaction, participation, and community in hosted media environments
- The labour, routines, and cultural expectations of creator-led media production
- Visibility, recommendation, imitation, and change across hosted media cultures
Learning Approaches
In this unit, you will learn by engaging in lectures, tutorials and self-study. In lectures, you will learn foundational knowledge of, and critical perspectives on, media entrepreneurship. In tutorials you will apply your understanding in activities and discussions. You must prepare for tutorials by engaging with the lecture material and completing any prescribed reading in advance.
Feedback on Learning and Assessment
You will receive feedback on your progressive understanding of key issues and debates in weekly tutorials. You will be provided with a Criterion Referenced Assessment sheet for all assessment that will explain your assessment’s achievement. Furthermore, you will be given verbal feedback on assessment where appropriate.
Assessment
Overview
In this unit, you will evaluate core concepts, debates, and approaches by applying them to hosted media examples and case studies. You will be required to complete three assessment tasks. The first assessment involves building a structured portfolio of dated field notes based on regular observation of your selected media maker. This is designed to support close attention to media form, creator voice, platform use, audience address, and recurring content patterns. The second assessment requires you to draw on this observation portfolio to produce a hosted media case study presentation. This is designed to support cumulative learning and help you develop an evidence-based argument about hosted media forms, creator cultures, and their relationship to earlier media traditions. The third assessment task evaluates your demonstrated participation and emergent leadership capabilities.
Unit Grading Scheme
7- point scale
Assessment Tasks
Assessment: Media Maker Field Notes Portfolio
Early in semester, you will select one hosted media maker to follow across the first half of the teaching period. This media maker might work primarily through YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, livestreaming, newsletters, Instagram, or another hosted media environment. Across several weeks, you will compile a structured portfolio of dated field notes that documents the creator’s recurring formats, genres, publishing rhythms, platform use, audience address, and creator voice. You will include annotated examples and short analytical reflections that link your observations to key unit concepts.
This assessment is designed to develop descriptive and analytical attention to hosted media forms and cultures. It also prepares you for the final assessment by helping you build your own body of evidence across time.
The ethical and responsible use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools is authorised in this assessment. See the relevant assessment details in Canvas for specific guidelines.
This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.
Assessment: The Hosted Media Podcast
For this assignment, you will use the hosted media maker you have tracked across the semester as a case study for a broader analytical question about hosted media forms and cultures. Drawing on your field notes, annotated examples, unit readings, and supplementary research, you will produce a live or recorded podcast that develops a sustained argument about how this creator’s practice illustrates a key feature of hosted media. This may include genre, seriality, creator voice, audience interaction, platform affordances, or the continuities and discontinuities between hosted media and earlier media forms.
This assessment is designed to move beyond observation and description by requiring you to interpret your chosen media maker as a case study in contemporary hosted media culture. It will demonstrate your knowledge of hosted media as a distinctive but historically connected area of contemporary media, and your ability to communicate an informed and persuasive argument using evidence gathered across the semester.
The ethical and responsible use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools is authorised in this assessment. See the relevant assessment details in Canvas for specific guidelines.
This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.
Assessment: Participation
In tutorials you will demonstrate your developing knowledge of hosted media forms and cultures by completing in-class challenges, debates, and/or other activities. Exercises will relate to unit content, readings and key concepts and expectations for how you contribute will be clearly outlined in the assessment criteria sheet.
The use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools is prohibited during this assessment.
The late submission period does not apply and no assignment extensions are available.
Academic Integrity
Academic integrity is a commitment to undertaking academic work and assessment in a manner that is ethical, fair, honest, respectful and accountable.
The Academic Integrity Policy sets out the range of conduct that can be a failure to maintain the standards of academic integrity. This includes, cheating in exams, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion and contract cheating. It also includes providing fraudulent or altered documentation in support of an academic concession application, for example an assignment extension or a deferred exam.
You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.
Breaching QUT’s Academic Integrity Policy or engaging in conduct that may defeat or compromise the purpose of assessment can lead to a finding of student misconduct (Code of Conduct – Student) and result in the imposition of penalties under the Management of Student Misconduct Policy, ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.
Requirements to Study
Requirements
All students are requested to visit and review the Health and Safety information on the HiQ web pages.
You will be advised if a unit requires additional mandatory health and safety inductions.
Resources
This unit has required readings. All available readings and other learning resources will be posted to the unit’s Canvas page. The required text book cannot be made available in its entirety.
Risk Assessment Statement
For risks associated with using campus buildings or QUT facilities, refer to the HiQ Health and Safety information.
You are advised to take regular rest breaks when engaging in prolonged computer-based work and ensure that your workstation is set up for optimal comfort to prevent strain or injury.
Please be advised that this unit may include the presentation and scholarly analysis of material and subject matters that may be considered confronting, such as certain representations of race, class, gender and violence. QUT counselling support is available should you feel the need to avail yourself of these services.
Course Learning Outcomes
This unit is designed to support your development of the following course/study area learning outcomes.KC40 Bachelor of Communication
- Demonstrate capacity to understand and critique the historical, cultural, technological, and regulatory implications of digital media, entertainment, communication, and news industries.
Relates to: ULO1, Media Maker Field Notes Portfolio, The Hosted Media Podcast - Demonstrate capacity to engage with and apply specialised knowledge of one or more areas of digital media, entertainment, communication, and news industries, including the relationship between disciplinary theory, research methodologies, and professional practice.
Relates to: ULO1, Media Maker Field Notes Portfolio, The Hosted Media Podcast - Demonstrate capacity to engage with and apply diverse ways of knowing the world in local and global contexts, including Indigenous Knowledge and Perspectives.
Relates to: Media Maker Field Notes Portfolio - Demonstrate effective communication skills with the ability to adapt strategies across different media and professional settings and for diverse audiences.
Relates to: Media Maker Field Notes Portfolio, The Hosted Media Podcast, Participation - Critically analyse, evaluate and synthesise complex forms of information and evidence to inform decision-making, problem solving and argumentation.
Relates to: ULO2, ULO3, The Hosted Media Podcast - Critically interrogate the economic and cultural power of digital media, communication, entertainment, and news to make ethical, sustainable, and inclusive contributions to diverse workplaces, communities, and audiences.
Relates to: ULO2 - Create authentic and professional-quality communication outputs that reflect an application of academic content, critical thinking skills, and social awareness.
Relates to: The Hosted Media Podcast - Identify, develop, and sustain effective and responsible leadership strategies and teamwork skills that generate value for yourself and others.
Relates to: Participation - Identify, develop, and sustain effective professional networks in the media and communication industries.
Relates to: Media Maker Field Notes Portfolio