module specification

This module is designed to equip fashion journalism students with the skills of multimedia and digital journalism and the knowledge of the digital fashion and beauty journalism industry. It aims to build on your core journalism skills and increase your confidence with digital and multimedia journalism tools and techniques, as well as critically discuss how these tools are used in the fashion journalism industry. You will also explore the factors, including commercial and marketing ones, that affect the content that fashion journalists are able to produce.  Crucially, this module works in tandem with Mobile Journalism: Fashion Features, where you will learn how to produce multimedia stories.

In class, you will examine fashion and beauty journalism online. With the help of practical and theoretical overviews of multimedia journalism, you will analyse how fashion media use digital tools and multimedia content and how commercial and marketing concerns affect the content produced by journalists. At the same time, you will examine how you can use digital tools and multimedia content in your own practice understand the commerical implications of what you produce and come up with ideas for a digital multimedia project – either journalistic or blogging - and start bringing this project to life.

You will learn how to produce multimedia content, how to design and style fashion websites, and how to use multimedia and digital tools to enhance your journalism online.

In class you will learn through a combination of lectures and practical newsroom production. By the middle of the term, your classes will operate as a newsroom, with you working in editorial groups to produce and design websites and produce content.

You will be assessed through a pitching session, a collaborative fashion journalism or blogging project that you produce in groups, and through online weekly journal contributions.

This module is designed to build on fashion journalism students’ core journalism skills acquired in year 1 and develop their use of multimedia and digital journalism tools in specific relation to the tradition and expectations within the fashion journalism and adjacent industries.

Building on the previous modules, the students will continue to learn and apply the central skillset of any journalist: from researching and sourcing fashion stories to interviewing, writing and editing, considering the implications and traditions of digital publishing within the fashion media. Students will examine the design of the leading fashion news websites and blogs on the whole and the layout and digital features of individual journalistic stories and blogs. [LO1, LO2, LO3]

Students will examine how digital storytelling works in the sphere of fashion journalism – from the design and use of digital features to combinations of different modes of presenting content (text, images, audio, video, interactive elements) to outside elements, including commerical ones, that affect the produced content. Students will learn to put together stories with multimodal elements and digital features. [LO2, LO3]

As part of the main assessment, student will work in teams to produce websites with fashion content – either journalistic or blogging and work together to fill these websites with content.
[LO4, LO2, LO3]

Finally, this module aims to not only provide students with the practical skills, but also analytical skills and knowledge that give them a chance to critically evaluate the editorial and production processes in fashion journalism and content production critically in order to boost their creativity and resilience, give them better understanding of the multitude of journalistic career options, and a chance to imagine better, more inclusive workspaces and outputs. [LO2, LO3]

The module will be taught by a programme of weekly sessions, comprising a three-hour block for each of the weeks in which it runs. Learning and teaching strategy will be based on an interactive practice-oriented model.

Teaching sessions will include instruction, practical workshops, blended learning and tutorials. In the beginning of the term teaching session will include both elements of lecture and practical work. Students are expected to attend and encouraged to participate in the sessions by asking questions, seeking and providing feedback from and to their colleagues, and reflecting on their own practice.

After the pitching assessment in week 4, students will start working in teams to create and publish their collaborative projects, and the classroom will operate as a newsroom. Tutor will be in class overseeing the work, providing feedback and coaching.

Feedback from peers is a valuable teaching strategy as students will play the roles of both authors, editors, and audiences of the writing produced in class. A reflective coaching atmosphere in sessions will aim to foster confidence and creativity in writing.

Tutorials and formative assessments will take place to prepare students for the summative assessments.

Electronic resources, including the university’s VLE and its tools, will be used by students and staff. VLE will contain notes, slides, readings, and weblinks related to the weekly teaching session topics.

Independent reflective study, including reading and writing exercises, will form the backbone of every session.

On successful completion of this module, having completed all the tasks set, students should be able to:

LO1. Understand how practical constraints associated with and resulting from emerging technologies affect the process of the fashion content production;
LO2. Understand how to select the platforms most appropriate for disseminations of specific fashion content and elements of content;
LO3. Identify and use a range of journalistic and technical skills appropriate to selected modes of dissemination;
LO4. Demonstrate the ability to work effectively as a team.

Core and additional reading lists available here:

https://rl.talis.com/3/londonmet/lists/992278C8-CA59-093A-1948-316041D8DBE0.html?lang=en&login=1