Units you can study
Choose from the undergraduate or postgraduate options on offer across a range of disciplines. As long as you meet the prerequisites, you can choose subjects from any of our discipline areas to suit your interests.
Most units have a lecture and a tutorial each week. Lectures and tutorials for postgraduate units are usually held in the evenings.
Approved units
All students can study these units, regardless of your academic background. These units will be approved on your QUT study plan after you apply.
Communication
CCB103 Digital Games, Culture and Society
This unit introduces approaches to studying digital games as cultural artifacts and for considering the role games play in society. It will place video games in their historical context, relating to other forms of mediated play such as board games, sports and toys, it will trace the history of the video game industry, and will consider how games relate to social and cultural issues and controversies. You will investigate how games relate to other forms of media, particularly social media, digital platforms and AI and how they are located within industrial structures and processes. You will consider how games function as entertainment, spaces for social connection and as a venue for social commentary and advocacy.
CYB111 Communication and Collaboration
This unit examines communication between individuals and teams in academic and professional settings. Through a theory/practice nexus, it aids in developing practical skills needed for effective communication such as giving and receiving feedback, collaborating with others, evaluating messages, presenting material in a professional manner and reflecting on communication experiences. With a focus on intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, this unit strengthens current communication practices in live and mediated settings. Presenting meaningful messages in both small and large groups, working on shared professional documents and reflecting on personal communication skills will provide a strong foundation for future studies and the workplace.
CYB112 Communication and Composition
Writing is an essential skill that you will need to succeed in your university program, as researching, composing, analysing, and forming a persuasive argument are fundamental to all assessment tasks. This unit introduces you to the conventions and practices of academic and evidence-based writing and will train you to interpret and analyse information to form a logical and persuasive argument. This unit confronts how digital technology shapes the form and practice of written communication today to build your information/digital literacies and research/evaluation skills. This unit will equip you with the necessary academic and factual writing skills to complete your assessment at a high standard throughout your course of study.
CYB113 Living in a Media World
This unit introduces students to the dynamic and evolving field of Media Studies. It looks at how various traditions of knowledge have sought to better understand the relationship between media and society. It corrects prevailing myths about media power and develops basic skills for engaging with different types of media. For example, how have scholars evaluated, measured, and theorised the impact of mass media forms such as print, television, and the internet on social and political life? Do new media and technologies demand to be understood in new ways, or can we utilise older systems of thought to better understand today’s rapidly changing media world? As future communication professionals, it is crucial that you understand the key concepts and debates that have shaped your discipline.
CYB114 Understanding Media Industries
This unit introduces the core concepts, analytical frameworks, and professional practices necessary to understand how the media industries operate as complex economic and cultural phenomena. This includes a comprehensive overview of media industry structures and functions, production and distribution processes, regulatory and technological conditions, ecological implications, and labour practices. You will also explore the political, economic, and cultural foundations of the media industries in national, regional, and global contexts. You will engage with media industry professionals as guests where appropriate to establish a capacity for the subsequent study of and employability in the media industries.
CYB115 Understanding Audiences
This unit introduces the ways in which the media, entertainment, and news industries have imagined, measured and monetised their audiences. Understanding that audiences are powerful economic and cultural constructions in the media and entertainment industries, the unit examines how researchers and industry professionals build knowledge about how people use media and the role that it plays in their lives. The unit establishes a theoretical foundation in audience studies, as well as explores a range of research methods that are used to study audiences/users, and prepares students to evaluate different types of knowledge claims about audiences.
CYB116 Understanding the Internet and Data
This unit explores the centrality of the internet as a communication tool in both the workplace and everyday life. It explores how internet technologies and digital communication platforms refashion communication practices and social organisation, including the centrality of debates around online behavior and codes of conduct. The unit also introduces students to basic data literacy and digital analytic skills.
KKB190 Yatdjuligin - Cultural Safety in Indigenous Australian Context
Culturally Safe practice is an essential element in a professional's ability to work in a holistic and accountable way with Indigenous Australian peoples and their communities. This requires deconstruction of your own cultures, values, beliefs and attitudes by taking you on a learning journey that allows you to move beyond cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity through to cultural safety.This unit will prompt you to develop your own strategies to be a culturally safe practitioner in both innovative and creative ways.
Digital media
CCB105 Digital Platforms
Digital Platforms have a tremendous impact on how we interact and engage with the world, from social media and payment processors to streaming services. It is critical for communication professionals to understand the cultural, economic, political, social and technical contexts from which contemporary digital platforms have emerged and in which they are continuing to evolve. In this unit you will develop skills to critically examine the politics of digital platforms and contribute to debates about alternative digital futures. Each week we will focus on both critiques and resistance. You will draw on scholarly research to discuss how colonialism and capitalism shape platform logics and how we navigate, resist and reimagine them.
CCB106 Popular Culture
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.
CCB201 Australian Media
This unit evaluates the industrial and cultural logics of Australian media. You will develop an understanding of contemporary debates, issues and developments and will learn about how the media in Australia are shaped by a range of factors including digital distribution technologies, ownership structures and cultural policy. The unit engages with questions of national culture and identity, amid the intense internationalising forces impacting Australian media industries. Understanding the technological, economic, and policy contexts within which Australian media operate will help you to form ethical media choices and professional communication practices.
CCB202 Social Media, Self and Society
Social Media has had a tremendous impact on our lives as individuals and members of larger societies. The debates surrounding these new and powerful technologies are often multi-faceted in their complexity. In this unit you will develop skills in critically examining and contributing to debates about social media’s impact on issues such as identity, privacy and the ethics of everyday life. You will draw on scholarly research to evaluate opposing perspectives and become critically informed communication professionals. Please note the online offering of this unit will be available to eligible online BCI students only.
CCB205 Digital Media Analytics
This unit equips you with critical understanding and skills in contemporary research and practice methods as they are applied to digital content, platforms and networks. From computational analyses of ‘big social data’ to close qualitative analysis of digital media platforms and practices, the approaches, methods and tools that are grounded in and suitable for the study of digital media are expanding and evolving rapidly. This unit aims to provide you with critical understanding and practical skills in how to select and implement contemporary digital approaches to the collection, analysis and interpretation of various forms of communication data, such as social media content (both textual and visual).
CCB206 Global Media and Culture
This unit provides students with a critical understanding of the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of global media industries. It introduces key disciplinary theories and debates about the creation, circulation and consumption of media content as it circulates across different locations and cultures. The unit also enables students to develop skills and knowledge necessary for living and working in globally diverse communities and professional contexts. The unit may survey a range of media industries and cultural forms and/or focus on a single site of global activity as it explores the inherently transnational nature of the content we consume.
CCB304 Social Media Strategy
This unit develops a critical understanding of, and applied skills in, best practice social media management within professional communication contexts. You will engage with the principles, tools and techniques of professional social media practice, social media presence and the development, implementation and analysis of digital communication strategies. It also provides opportunities to apply them in the ever-evolving social media landscape. This is an advanced unit that builds on individual and teamwork approaches to learning and teaching developed in introductory and intermediate units.
CCB305 Critical Issues in Media and Communication
This advanced unit engages with critical and contemporary issues concerned with the complex relationships among media, communication, and culture. It builds upon core knowledge and skills, and is designed to increase confidence in your analytical capacity and problem solving ability as a future media and communications professional. Drawing on the latest from our world-leading researchers, this unit will enable you to apply historical, economic, political, technological, and cultural perspectives when responding to real world issues facing the media and communications industries.
CCB306 Media and Communication Capstone
The ability to engage audiences is a persistent challenge in today's media and communications industries, and is therefore a highly sought-after skill. In this capstone unit you will demonstrate your proficiency in the methods, tools, and analytic approaches used to engage audiences through a ‘real world’ media and communications project. This unit builds upon core knowledge and skills gained throughout your degree, particularly your theoretical and applied understanding of audiences. In doing so, it develops your professional capacity for independence, leadership, confidence, and collaboration. This unit equips you with in-demand knowledge and capabilities to prepare you for your career in the dynamic media and communications industries.
Journalism
CJB101 Foundations of Journalism
This unit provides you with foundational knowledge of what ‘journalism’ means today as both a professional practice and cultural form. You will learn about the changing role of journalism in society, how journalism underpins (and undermines) democracy, and be introduced to journalism ethics and law. You will learn how the business activities of media companies shape news values, and how they employ contemporary practices of story selection and verification. Against this industrial context, you will begin to learn journalistic writing conventions and apply effective reporting techniques. In doing so, this unit equips you with the essential knowledge and tools for you to understand and thrive in a complex and dynamic communication industry.
CJB105 Shortform News Production
Journalists must be able to produce content that engages audiences across a range of formats and platforms. In this unit, you will develop the ability to successfully perform a range of newsgathering activities, including interviewing and live blogging. Drawing on this newsgathering activity, you will produce under ‘real world’ deadlines professional quality audio and video content that is suitable for TV, radio, or digital platforms. You will also apply multimedia skills to produce transmedia content that supports contemporary journalism practices, and create digital communication content that engages and/or persuades audiences. In addition to producing content, you will undertake editorial roles that support successful short form news production, and understand the value of community and collaboration in the multifaceted practice of contemporary journalism.
CJB205 Data-Driven Storytelling and Verification
Communication professionals now operate in a world in which data is plentiful, and often relatively easy to access. This situation also throws up a number of challenges, though, with these practitioners needing to know where to find such data, how to make sense of it and, more importantly, how to present that data to an audience in a meaningful and engaging way. This unit therefore equips students with some of these foundational skills, and provides them with a strong understanding of how statistics and data can be used to enhance news stories, and help to uncover stories which have not been told yet.
CJB303 Political Communication
This unit surveys the theory and professional practices of political and governmental communication, especially through journalism, media and communications industries. It examines contemporary and historical political issues and communications in Australia and internationally from the perspectives of democratic theory, media influence, strategic image, and issue management. The unit comprises an overview of theoretical approaches to political communication, the construction of political discourse, and the mobilisation of audiences/voters; an understanding of the relationship between communication strategies and the management of politics, with cases drawn from Australian and international politics. Students will develop the capacity to critically appraise strategic issues such as political persuasion, electoral strategy, uses/impacts of digital and social media, and public opinion formation and to create messages about issues connected to politics and government.
CJB304 Critical Issues in News and Factual Media
This advanced unit engages with critical and contemporary issues that are upending news media business practices, values, and trends. It builds upon core knowledge and skills, and is designed to increase confidence in your analytical capacity and problem solving ability as a future reporters and factual storytellers in a rapidly changing industry. Drawing on the latest from our world-leading researchers, this unit will enable you will apply historical, economic, political, technological, and cultural perspectives to understand and master the real world issues facing the factual media landscape.
CJB305 Longform News Production
Longform journalism continues to evolve on a range of platforms, with digital media tools providing exciting storytelling possibilities, including podcasts and multimedia features. This unit provides an opportunity for students to apply their advanced journalistic skills in producing longform non-fiction content, primarily using audio or video. You will learn how to generate story ideas and news angles, and select the most appropriate format for telling stories. You will then use research, interviewing and production skills to produce engaging content. This unit also provides opportunities for reflection and constructive critique of your work. The unit aids you in producing credible non-fiction content in a dynamic and appealing style, applying skills that are transferable to areas outside journalism. It also provides awareness of the market for longform non-fiction content.
Professional communication
CCB307 Promotional Communication Capstone
This capstone unit prepares for work-ready graduates by developing students’ adaptive capabilities to thrive in the dynamic promotional communication landscape. It integrates prior knowledge of promotional communication theories, research, industry trends in advertising and public relations, and professional skills required in a digital-first environment. Through classwork, independent study, and real-world projects, students develop an understanding of the local and international relevance of promotional communication, with opportunities to produce a portfolio of applied communication artefacts and engagement projects that contribute to employability in the promotional industries.
CWB111 Scientific and Technical Writing
This unit introduces you to the principles of writing clearly in a science-based context and to the discursive frameworks that inform scientific and technical writing. It aims to provide you with an understanding of the conventions of writing and publishing scientific and technical information and to develop skills in communicating this information for a general audience. Graduates in the fields of engineering, science and information technology are required to assess high volumes of information and to communicate key scientific and technical ideas to a general audience. As such, there are growing industry and research demands for graduates with professional writing skills that deliver clear and well-structured written information about complex material.
CWB200 Interpersonal and Intercultural Negotiation
This unit introduces the wider context of cultural practices that inform communication at the individual and social levels. The unit explores how communication in the workplace and other professional contexts is influenced by factors such as power dynamics, gender, nationality, cultural norms, and ethnicity. It develops your engagement with the theories of and skills for successful intercultural and interpersonal exchange in business and professional relationships in a global context. Your career will be shaped by global forces, events, and contexts. Therefore, to be a global effective communication practitioner, you will need to see communication in the context of social and cultural norms and assumptions.
CWB204 Persuasive Communication
This unit provides rhetorical tools, strategies, techniques, and practices of analysis related to strategic communication in professional and workplace contexts. It teaches methods of persuasive communication which allows practitioners to create and understand influential messages. Examples of rhetoric in action are taken from technical, political, and business communication as well as other fields such as creative industries. As a professional communication practitioner, you should be able to understand the principles of persuasion, use the vocabulary of persuasion and evaluate the efficacy of different persuasive strategies. You will be given opportunities to create sophisticated communication artefacts that inform, persuade and instruct depending on the specifics of audience and context. Please note the online offering of this unit will be available to eligible online BCI students only.
Units requiring approval
Students need specific academic background knowledge to study these units, so we will assess your eligibility and determine if you’re able to take these units after you apply. We will let you know the outcome through the application portal as soon as possible.
Communication
CCN109 GenAI for Professional Communication
This unit explores the applications of generative AI (GenAI) in professional communication contexts. It equips participants with the skills to effectively use, integrate, and critically evaluate GenAI tools for various professional communication purposes. The unit first introduces participants to the opportunities and risks of using GenAI for audience analysis and for crafting data-driven, targeted messaging using text, sound, and images. Then, participants explore how to integrate GenAI technologies into communication workflows. The module covers how to audit GenAI outputs, navigate associated ethical and regulatory considerations, and manage unexpected organisational consequences.
CCN111 Social Media Data Analytics
Knowing how to analyse social media data sets to answer questions and make decisions that improve content and engagement is a fundamental skill for contemporary communication professionals. It is also essential that future focused communication professionals have both an understanding of how computational technologies transform the world of communication, and the hands-on skills to collect and analyse data. It is included in the early part of the program to develop your foundational data analytics knowledge and computational thinking.
CCN113 Social Media Strategy Project
This Work Integrated Learning unit synthesises the knowledge and skills developed in earlier foundational units associated with effective social media management. It applies them to a professional media and communication industries context. The unit supports the development of collaborative teamwork skills to respond to a real client brief. This reflects the kinds of work that professional communicators undertake.
CCN201 Digital Transformation of Media Industries and the Future of Work
This unit explores how digital transformation impacts on media and communication industries and the working lives of communication professionals. To develop effective communication strategies and pursue work opportunities, communication professionals need to have an understanding of emerging trends in media industries, and how to thrive in this environment as a digital communication professional. As such, the unit provides an advanced and critical understanding of digital transformation, how it disrupts the communication and media industries, and the specific implications for the future of digital communication professionals.
CCN204 Audience Analytics
Digital technologies have transformed the way communicators engage with and understand diverse media audiences. This unit will explore the fundamental theoretical frameworks, methods and metrics for identifying and understanding audiences. 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 earlier units in this course.
CCN205 Data-Driven Storytelling
This unit examines visual communication for information and the application of principles for effective information design. Understanding and engaging with the ever-growing quantities of data is a challenge for both organisations and individuals. Increasingly, experts are required to not only evaluate and prepare this data, but also to identify and communicate it within organisations, or to stakeholders, clients, users, community groups, etc. The effective visual communication of those stories in the data is a design process informed by advanced principles of information design and is critical for audience engagement. Data-driven storytelling is an advanced visual information design unit.
CCN206 Communicating with Bots
This unit introduces the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and bots as effective tools for communication planning and execution. It examines the impact of such technologies on communication planning and practice, and the skills required to develop bots. The unit provides the hands-on experience of applying technology to develop bots that algorithmically communicate via social media platforms. Communication professionals need to understand how to use emerging technologies such as AI to innovatively engage with their users and audiences. Bots, generally defined as “a computer program that performs automatic repetitive tasks”, and other technologies in the field of AI are changing the way communication is planned and executed, and how stories are told and evolve across social media platforms.
CCN213 Social Media Strategy Project
This Work Integrated Learning unit synthesises the knowledge and skills developed in earlier foundational units associated with effective social media management. It applies them to a professional media and communication industries context. The unit supports the development of collaborative teamwork skills to respond to a real client brief. This reflects the kinds of work that professional communicators undertake.
Journalism
CJB204 Social Justice and Journalism Ethics
Journalism has a significant influence on the way people see the world, and how they think about their place within it. Journalism therefore has the ability to both address, as well as exacerbate, existing power imbalances that exist in our culture. This unit provides students with a better understanding of these dynamics, and how they can shape their future professional practice in ways that might better account for the structural advantages and disadvantages that different groups (based on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class and physical ability) face. The unit will introduce students to the professional codes of conduct under which journalists often operate, and how they apply in the Australian context. The unit also provides opportunities for students to explore real-world ethical dilemmas in the media industry, and to work through examples of applied ethical decision-making. In doing so, the unit aims to produce more socially-conscious, ethical journalism practitioners.
Professional communication
CWB201 Corporate Writing and Editing
Professional communication specialists must have a command of an extensive range of corporate writing genres to create and edit corporate documents. This unit allows you to develop the ability to write in at least two corporate writing genres and be proficient in three other genres. It deals with both the fundamentals of language (grammar, punctuation, style) and common corporate writing genres (manuals, reports, speeches, brochures). As a corporate writing specialist, you must also be able to respond authoritatively to technical and stylistic writing questions when such matters arise in the workplace. You will develop your knowledge about how language works and be able to use that knowledge in practical writing applications. As a result, you will become a more confident writer and communicator in corporate and professional situations.
Enrolment restrictions
Postgraduate students can't enrol in:
- first-year undergraduate core units
- postgraduate honours-level units, which change from year to year.
Enrolment in capstone units is generally not allowed, as these units require extended knowledge gained throughout the course of a full degree.
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