CCQ204 Audience Analytics

Unit Outline: Session 3 2024, QUT Online, Online

Overview

This unit focuses on developing your critical understanding of media audience and the fundamental theoretical frameworks, methods and metrics for identifying and measuring it. Digital technologies have transformed the way communicators engage with and analyse diverse media audiences. The unit will aid you in recognising audiences by means of descriptive and inferential statistics. An applied and critical understanding of audience analytics is crucial for communication professionals. This unit builds upon and deepens the ideas and methods for audience analysis introduced in CCN106 Introduction to Social Media Analytics. The methods and techniques explored in this unit also complement CCN203 Communication Research and Problem Solving.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

1. Collaborate in a team to apply established and emerging audience frameworks and research methods to identify audiences and analyse audience characteristics and behaviours.
2. Use a range of industry standard technologies to collect, analyse, manipulate and present audience data.
3. Synthesise, interpret and make sense of audience data to inform and justify recommendations.
4. Reflect upon the ethical and legal implications and requirements relating to the analysis of online audience behaviours.

Content

Learning Approaches

This unit will be delivered fully online and may include intensive delivery. It will be facilitated by a unit coordinator using a flipped learning approach. This approach requires you to complete online pre-workshop activities independently, prior to attending the online workshop. Indicative learning experiences in this unit may include:

• participating in online discussions
• analysing industry case studies
• viewing mini-lecture videos on key topics
• reading book chapters and scholarly and industry articles
• critically reviewing audience engagement industry trends
• applying audience research methods to real world clients
• giving and receiving peer feedback
• using industry audience research tools and metrics including Tableau and Python
• critically analysing and visualising metrics
• participating in ethical and legal implications hypotheticals and debates
• collaborating in teams to achieve an outcome for a client
• interacting with clients
• reflecting on learning
• managing a small project
• giving and receiving feedback.

Feedback opportunities from members of the teaching team and your peers will be integrated into the unit as outlined in the Feedback to students section of this unit outline.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

You will receive feedback on your learning in a variety of ways, including:

• Informal formative feedback will be provided via quizzes, self-assessment tools, peer feedback and through individual or whole of class feedback, the debriefing of learning activities or via comments in online communities.
• Formal written or recorded feedback will be received on both formative and summative assessment tasks, in addition to the grade on the Criterion Reference Assessment sheet.

Feedback on your formative assessment task will be received prior to the submission of your summative assessment task.

Assessment

Overview

The two linked assessment tasks in the unit: an Audience Analytics Project and a Audience Analytics Individual Presentation. These tasks are designed to provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate your applied and critical understanding of audience analytic methods and metrics as well as reflecting on ethical and legal issues relating to collecting, using and storing audience information and data.

Opportunities to complete formative activities, which mirror the assessment tasks, will be available to help you to gauge your progress. Opportunities for teaching team and peer feedback will be integrated into the unit.

Unit Grading Scheme

7- point scale

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Audience Analytics Individual Presentation

In this assignment you will develop PowerPoint slides and record a video presentation at your computer. In this presentation, you will identify, assess and consider the critical implications, especially ethical and legal, of applying various audience research approaches, tools and methods to conduct audience analytics. Your presentation will need to be supported by reference to and discussion of appropriate scholarly literature introduced in the unit.

Assessment: Audience Analytics Project

You work in a consultancy firm that must respond to a client brief. The client is requesting an in-depth analysis of their current audience characteristics and online behaviours as well as recommendations on strategies for enhancing audience engagement and extending their audience reach.

You will respond to a client brief and apply appropriate theoretical frameworks and audience research methods and tools introduced in this unit to identify, measure, explain and analyse the behaviours of a specific media audience and make recommendations. The results of your analysis will be presented in the form of a report, which incorporates appropriate visuals and graphs.

This is an assignment for the purposes of an extension.

Academic Integrity

Students are expected to engage in learning and assessment at QUT with honesty, transparency and fairness. Maintaining academic integrity means upholding these principles and demonstrating valuable professional capabilities based on ethical foundations.

Failure to maintain academic integrity can take many forms. It includes cheating in examinations, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, and submitting an assessment item completed by another person (e.g. contract cheating). It can also include providing your assessment to another entity, such as to a person or website.

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.

Further details of QUT’s approach to academic integrity are outlined in the Academic integrity policy and the Student Code of Conduct. Breaching QUT’s Academic integrity policy is regarded as student misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.

Resources

Risk Assessment Statement

This unit requires you to engage in the use of social media and therefore you need to take appropriate steps to ensure that your privacy settings are up-to-date. For assistance on updating your privacy settings visit the Managing your privacy on social media page on the QUT web site. You may also like to have a look at the Creating a Better Online You online module, which explores how to promote yourself on social media, how to protect yourself online and your wellbeing online. If you have concerns about using social media, because of privacy, social, cultural or political reasons please discuss these privately with the unit coordinator.

You are advised to back-up your digital files on a regular basis to ensure work is not lost if there is a hardware failure. Information about the free file storage provided by QUT for students is available on the Storing your files page.