CCB106 Popular Culture
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: | CCB106 |
|---|---|
| Equivalent(s): | CWB112 |
| Credit points: | 12 |
| Timetable | Details in HiQ, if available |
| Availabilities |
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| CSP student contribution | $2,174 |
| Pre-2021 CSP student contribution | $1,020 The pre-2021 commonwealth supported place (CSP) contribution amount only applies to students enrolled in a course prior to 2021. To learn more, visit our Understanding your fees page. |
| Domestic tuition unit fee | $4,704 |
| International unit fee | $4,944 |
Unit Outline: Semester 2 2026, Kelvin Grove, Internal
| Unit code: | CCB106 |
|---|---|
| Credit points: | 12 |
| Equivalent: | CWB112 |
| Coordinator: | David Richard | david.richard@qut.edu.au |
Overview
The products, practices, and pleasures of popular culture are frequently dismissed as being superficial, unserious, or unimportant. This unit, however, celebrates popular culture as a contested and shifting phenomenon that permeates everyday life. Far from mundane, popular culture is charged with a political valence that reflects—and shapes—our lives. This unit further develops conceptual framework(s) and analytic tools to critically evaluate the texts, artefacts, and/or practices of popular culture. In completing this unit, students will understand how the communication industries produce and circulate popular culture, and will be able to critique the politics of pleasure that frame the consumption of mass culture.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:
- Understand the key issues and debates that inform the production, circulation, and consumption of popular culture.
- Effectively and convincingly analyse the texts, mediums, and/or practices of popular culture to reveal the political, social, and/or economic significance of popular culture
- Demonstrate effective critical research skills and develop evidence-based arguments
- Demonstrate effective and persuasive communication skills
Content
This unit may:
- Contrast and debate core disciplinary, theoretical, and analytic approaches to understanding popular culture
- Consider how taste cultures are formed and negotiated through the production and consumption of popular culture
- Analyse a variety of texts, mediums, and practices of popular culture (such as film, television, digital cultural practices, celebrities, and branded products)
- Evaluate the porous relationship between entertainment, media, and promotional industries.
Learning Approaches
You will learn through lectures and tutorials. Tutorials will give you the opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of foundational knowledges and conceptual/theoretical approaches in discussions and other collaborative activities. You are required to prepare for tutorials by engaging with the lecture content and completing any prescribed reading/materials/activities before class.
Feedback on Learning and Assessment
You will receive feedback on your progress across learning activities and assessment items. You will be given regular feedback on your developing knowledge by both academics and peers in tutorial discussions and activities; you will receive written feedback on your A2 assignment that will directly relate to and inform your A3 assignment.
Assessment
Overview
There are three assessment items in this unit. Your developing professional identity will be evaluated in the A1, while the A2 will sharpen your analytic skills. The skills you develop in the A2 assignment will be helpful to complete the A3 task.
Unit Grading Scheme
7- point scale
Assessment Tasks
Assessment: Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue
This task requires you to demonstrate your developing critical communication skills and capacity for professional dialogue through a series of formal peer group exercises within your tutorial sessions.
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.
Assessment: Digital Curation
You will produce a digital poster that creatively articulates your personal understanding and relationship to an aspect of “popular culture” that will be posed on Canvas. Your poster will critically incorporate and respond to unit materials and concepts, and will be accompanied by a 7 minute narration and list of references.
This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.
Assessment: Popular Culture Project
Your applied understanding of unit concepts will be evaluated by completing the Popular Culture Project. Responding to a brief that will be posted on the unit's Canvas page, you will complete a research-informed analysis that answers a key question, problem, or debate in popular culture studies. In completing the project, you will also demonstrate relevant, independent research skills and the primary analysis of a popular culture text, object, medium, or practice. Further details and specific requirements/instructions will be made available on the unit’s Canvas site. Further details will be made available on the unit’s Canvas site.
This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.
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
Students will be given online access to all essential unit materials via the unit's canvas site. This includes essential readings.
Resource Materials
Other
To enable your full participation in units that utilise virtual learning environments, for example participating in online activities and engaging with online learning materials, you will need access to a reliable computer with an internet connection, webcam, headset and microphone, as well as a learning environment where you are able to fully participate undisturbed when required.
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, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - 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, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - 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: ULO1, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - Demonstrate effective communication skills with the ability to adapt strategies across different media and professional settings and for diverse audiences.
Relates to: ULO4, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - Critically analyse, evaluate and synthesise complex forms of information and evidence to inform decision-making, problem solving and argumentation.
Relates to: ULO2, ULO3, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - 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: ULO1, ULO3, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - Demonstrate critical digital literacy skills across diverse platforms and technologies, including familiarity with analytic tools to effectively and responsibly interpret data in the media, communication, and news industries.
Relates to: ULO2, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - Create authentic and professional-quality communication outputs that reflect an application of academic content, critical thinking skills, and social awareness.
Relates to: ULO4, Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project
KK43 Bachelor of Creative Industries
- Demonstrate broad and coherent theoretical and practical knowledge required for creative enterprise, career development and interdisciplinary collaborations, supported by depth in at least one creative disciplinary area.
Relates to: Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - Demonstrate well-developed cognitive and ideation skills to identify, analyse and evaluate opportunities to address authentic complex problems.
Relates to: Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - Communicate effectively in a range of forms across multiple media modes, for sharing and disseminating knowledge, skills and ideas, and collaborative practice and navigation of social networks.
Relates to: Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project - Embody social and ethical responsibilities and exhibit well-developed judgement with resilience, integrity, curiosity and responsibility.
Relates to: Critical Engagement and Professional Dialogue, Digital Curation, Popular Culture Project