Beacon is an online multimedia journal that showcases the work of current undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia who explore and study the subject of Media.
Tess Gellert
This piece explores media’s role in the future of terrorism, and how media theoretical concepts like Debord’s “spectacle” and McLuhan’s “global village” can inform the way we understand terrorist groups’ use of technology and digital media.
Sampriti Mana
The Apple Is Rotting, I am Not is a conceptual work that documents the artist’s first heartbreak in an honest manner while exploring folds in time and space.
Emily Van Ryn
The way we store, share, and listen to music is becoming increasingly digital – what does this mean for music’s sentimental value?
Hui Wong
This essay draws a connection between the 1998 film The Truman Show and the workings of surveillance capitalism in our digitally mediated world, arguing that the film, made the year Google was founded, anticipates both how we understand our relationship to data, privacy, and capitalism, and how we may resist an unwelcome future.
Ayusha Mahajan
Dichotomous Messaging: In this short memoir, text and image tango in the coming-of-age revelations of an indrawn teenager, and an image sharing app becomes worth a thousand text messages.
Matthew Asuncion
The confluence of media production and distribution has been a boon to everyday consumers. But for comics trying to make a name for themselves, it’s easier than ever to enter the running, yet harder than ever to outrun the pack.
Tatiana Povoroznyuk
This essay looks at the work of Esther Parada—a pioneer of digital photomontage—in today’s context of endless algorithmically-curated montages which surround the average social media user.
Yasmine Semeniuk
This piece examines Emily Carr’s settler colonialist perspective through three watercolours from 1906-1910 which illustrate her differing perceptions of Indigenous and Chinese culture—a view that highlights an ongoing dichotomy permeating Western views of the other: who gets to belong, and who gets excluded.
Who We Are
The University of British Columbia’s Beacon: Journal of Media Studies is a student-led academic journal that publishes a volume of peer- and faculty-reviewed work each school year. Though our journal is directly affiliated with the Bachelor of Media Studies program at UBC, our goal is to celebrate and showcase academic and creative work made by all undergraduate students at UBC who study Media Studies, Creative Writing, Art History, and beyond. Visit our About + Contact page to learn more.
How To Submit
Current undergraduate UBC students from the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses are eligible to submit up to 4 original pieces each school year. Students do not have to be a Bachelor of Media Studies student to submit, as long as the work submitted is related to the subject of Media Studies. All submissions must follow UBC’s Procedures regarding Academic Integrity. Visit our Submit page to learn more.
Land Acknowledgement
This journal is created at UBC Vancouver, which sits on the unceded, ancestral territories of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples.