The exam is open book (course materials ONLY may be used – Internet searches are NOT PERMITTED). The exam will be available on the Week 14 Module in Canvas at 9:00 AM on Thursday, December 9; it is due on Saturday, December 11 at 23:59 PM).
What should I study and how should I study for the SOCI 230 Final Exam?
The most important thing for this exam, other than completing the readings and worksheets and attending the lectures, is critical thinking.
This means you will be expected to think about pop culture beyond its surface-level meaning and offer your own critical interpretations of how it contributes to social inequality and social change. Therefore, to get the best mark possible on this exam, you should:
Re-read the papers listed on the syllabus and take notes, thinking about which questions could be asked about them
Look at the lecture notes online, your own class notes, and your worksheets
Re-examine the Midterm Study Guide
The following units are a summary of some of the main points of the modules on Canvas.
Considering these points will help you study for the final exam.
The Medium is the Message
Reconsider McLuhan’s main ideas
How can these ideas be applied to pop culture?
How can these ideas be applied to media technology?
Popular Culture and Gender
Perspectives and theories on the role of technology in gender equity
Basic facts about women’s involvement in technology-related fields
Why women’s involvement in technology-related fields is limited
How the internet might be different if it were made by women
Gender Norms for Sale: Advertising and Popular Culture
Identifying gender stereotypes established by and perpetuated in advertising and how these rely on culturally-based ideas of gender
Considering representations of diversity in advertising
Identifying the social impacts of the above and their relationship to mass consumerism
How are feminist messages co-opted by advertising agencies?
Queer Star Trek: Fandom, Sexuality and Popular Culture
What is fandom? What are characteristics of participatory culture?
Diversity, but not sexual diversity depicted in Star Trek
Queer fans able to interpret characters and situations as metaphors of homosexuality
Pop Culture and Disability: Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Popular Culture
Changing representations of disability in popular media
Contemporary examples of progressive and problematic representations of disability
Unique characteristics of serial TV or Netflix shows
What social inclusion and exclusion in popular media represents
The role of social media in social inclusion
Pop Culture and Social Control & Social Change
The relationship between popular culture and social change
The role of the music industry in social change
Popular culture as a social movement?
Is the anti-heroine an agent of social control, or of social change?
Religion and Pop Culture
Different social functions of religion
Theoretical perspectives on the use of religion in pop culture
How pop culture can act as social commentary on religion
Popular Culture, Gender, and Music on the Move
· Musical Crossover
· Africana Womanism
· Musical Bordering
· Consideration of who holds power in the music industry?
· Globalization and musical mobility
· How do questions of power connect to the movement of popular music?
Social Media, Media Globalization
· Definition of social media
· Government/corporate observation of social media communication
· Media reinforcement of cultural messages
· Convergence, exposure of content on multiple media platforms
· Alternative media
Cinema
· Film as depicting a “just” world
· Film as a tool of the Culture Industry
· Film as a conveyer of cultural values
· Studio system, Hollywood Renaissance, Blockbuster Era
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|