Course Offerings by term

This course provides historical background to understand how contemporary communication practices and technologies have developed and are in the process of developing and reflects on what communication has been in different human societies across time and place. It considers oral and literate cultures, the development of writing systems, of printing, and different cultural values assigned to the image. The parallel rise of mass media and modern western cultural and political forms and the manipulation and interplay of the properties and qualities conveyed by speech, sight, and sound are studied with reference to the printed book, newspapers, photography, radio, cinema, television, new media.

What is globalization? Why study the media? What is the relationship between the media and globalization? What are the consequences of media globalization on our lives and identities? This course critically explores these questions and challenging issues that confront us today. Globalization can be understood as a multi-dimensional, complex process of profound transformations in all spheres – technological, economic, political, social, cultural, intimate and personal. Yet much of the current debates of globalization tend to be concerned with “out there” macro-processes, rather than what is happening “in here,” in the micro-processes of our lives. This course explores both the macro and the micro. It encourages students to develop an enlarged way of thinking – challenging existing paradigms and providing comparative perspectives.

The skills learned in this course will prepare students for upper-division communication courses, and provide students with basic research methods in the field of communication. Students will become familiar with a range of research methods (survey, interview, ethnography, discourse, and political economy.

This course provides an overview of political communication theories, modes, means and institutions and serves as an introduction to how communication scholars study politics and the media. We will cover prevalent political communication theories and trends, the relationship between political institutions and the press both in the US and in other countries, elections, debates, political campaigning and advertising, new media and politics, political socialization, education, politics and popular culture.