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NEWS FLASH
The first round of applications for the Bachelor of Communication Honours program closed on November 10, 2010. Selection decisions have been made. If you are still considering honours please email the program director (Adrian Miles) to discuss possibilities - adrian dot miles @rmit.edu.au

OUTLINE
The Bachelor of Communication Honours is a one year program that is completed after your undergraduate degree. It is only available for the best performing students and provides you with the opportunity to undertake a major research project with supervision. Research is by thesis or project.

Students undertake research into a wide variety of areas and topics, including computer games, online and social media, cinema studies, public relations, journalism, online journalism, print journalism, radio production, television production, documentary, advertising, social advocacy and media practice, communication studies, and popular music.

Students usually apply for honours because they want the opportunity to undertake a sustained investigation in their disciplinary field. The sort of opportunity that you do not have during your undergraduate studies.

Entry is competitive, and is by direct application to RMIT University.

Successful honours projects have included:

  • A research report into the marketing and promotion of Australian wine to the 20 - 30 year old market (public relations, this graduate is now working in public relations in the wine industry)
  • A short film script (media studies, this graduate successfully applied for a place in the Columbia University film school, New York)
  • A pilot TV show for 'tweens' (children aged from around 9 to 12), including story bible and associated material (media studies, this graduate has recently worked for the BBC and is currently working in the film industry in India)
  • A research thesis on the representation of Los Angeles in the film Collateral (media studies, this graduate successfully applied for an Australian Postgraduate Award and is completing on PhD on this scholarship)
  • A script and TV advertisement for Actors for Human Rights (media studies, this graduate is working in Britain in the field of social advocacy)
  • A thesis on the relation of publicity to commercial Australian television news (public relations, this graduate is working in corporate media communications and is intending to return to study to undertake a PhD)
  • A thesis on the relation of the ABC to Victorian Emergency Services as an emergency broadcaster (journalism, this graduate is currently working as a television journalist)
  • A radio documentary on William Cooper, an Aboriginal activist who was the first Australian to lodge a protest with the German Embassy against Kristallnacht (media studies, this student has produced radio documentaries for Radio National and is teaching at a university)

MISSION
Labsome is the informal title given to the Bachelor of Communication Honours program. It is called labsome because:

  • we have our own studio to work in so we needed to name it
  • the program consists of 5 individual streams (journalism, media, professional communication, advertising, public relations) but they are all together in the honours program
  • B.Comm Honours doesn't really reflect the idea that this particular honours program is about collaboration as much as individual research
  • 75% of labsome students undertake honours by project - they make stuff - so a title with some suggestion of laboratory, making, doing, is helpful
  • and let's face it, it is a brand, and with all the other media and communication honours programs out there, calling ours labsome helps identify that we are different, and what that difference is

So, labsome is intended to let the best students think seriously and creatively around gnarly questions in communication and media. Students are expected to make things that push the envelope concerning ideas, methods and artefacts. In a networked, digital age what will communication be, what will it look and sound like, what will our jobs be and how should we express all this? In Labsome everyone will be a knowledge and communication producer (not a consumer), and we are participants within modern information networks and ecologies. (And we will know what that means in thought and deed.)