Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

Course Overview

This class addresses important, current debates in media with in-depth discussion of popular perceptions and policy implications. Students will engage in the critical study of the economic, political, social, and cultural significance of media, and learn to identify, analyze, and understand the complex relations among media texts, policies, institutions, industries, and infrastructures. This class offers the opportunity to discuss, in stimulating and challenging ways, topics such as ideology, propaganda, net neutrality, big data, digital hacktivism, digital rebellion, media violence, gamification, collective intelligence, participatory culture, intellectual property, artificial intelligence, etc., from historical, transcultural, and multiple methodological perspectives. We will examine the framing of these issues, their ethical and policy implications, as well as strategies for repositioning the debates.

Prerequisites

CMS.100 Introduction to Media Studies

Learning Objectives

1. Demonstrating, through oral presentations, discussions, and written works, an understanding of the current debates in media;
2. Engaging with complex ideas, opening up to different perspectives, and developing critical thinking skills;
3. Learning how to discriminate between reliable and unreliable sources of information;
4. Analyzing cultural objects critically and situating this analysis in a particular theoretical framework;
5. Using the thesis / antithesis / synthesis method to build a strong and nuanced argumentation.

Grading