Communication and Media Studies Minor

This course introduces students to the fundamental concepts and theories of communication and media studies as they apply to the ever-increasing intercultural interactions of a contemporary world. In particular, students will learn the basics of intercultural/international communication processes, gaining a foundation for developing intercultural communication competence.

Media pervades our social and private lives. We make it and in turn it makes us. This course offers an introduction to media studies, a field which seeks to understand and use media in complex and intentional ways. The course explores media as content, as an industry and as a social force. In this way, media is understood as both as an artifact (constituted by many parts) and as a set of complex processes (including production, distribution, regulation and consumption). Students will learn key vocabularies and concepts in and approaches to media studies that will help them to define, describe, and critique media artifacts and processes in a variety of written and spoken formats. In addition to equipping students with the skills to understand and critique media, this course encourages and provides students with the building blocks to produce media content. Students who successfully complete this course will be prepared to take advanced courses in media studies.

This course introduces students to quantitative and qualitative research methods as they apply to communication and media studies. Students will acquire skill in examining various communication and media issues by conducting an original research project.

This course explores media from the lens of ecology, using ecological concepts and thinking to both explore media as ecosystemic and reflect upon media production and consumption in terms of sustainability. Ecology is evoked because it is one of the most useful and expressive contemporary discourses to help articulate both the dynamic interrelations and interactions that characterize all forms of community as well as the ethical and political implications of their maintenance, management and/or disruption. The ultimate goal of this course is to put media in its place; situating prominent media forms within their unique cultural, historical, and geographical places and putting media in its appropriate place in our own lives and communities.