Digital Media, Cultures, and Industries Minor

CMST 2500: Media Studies

This course introduces students to three key areas in the field of media and communication: 1) media industries, circulation and the political economy of media; 2) the legacy of British Cultural Studies in exploring identity, resistance, and the active audience; 3) media effects, including quantitative audience reception studies and ethnographic approaches to audience analysis. Students will be encouraged to directly engage with the political, social, cultural, and economic influence of evolving technologies and mediums in our digitally mediated global environments.

CMST 2510: Digital Diversities: Media Production as Social Justice

This course introduces students to a social justice topic (chosen by the professor), theories of visual and audio communication, and basic video/audio production skills. Students demonstrate learning about the topic in short paper assignments and demonstrate production skills in practice projects. These assignments and theories studied inform the creation of a final project—an ethnographic video or audio podcast documentary on the social justice topic.

Students select 1-2 of the below course options.

CMST 3520: The Digital Self

Our central question in this course will be: what’s the nature of online identity? In this class, we’ll explore that question through examining: theoretical approaches to self and society, arguments for and against technological determinism, technology’s contested impact on civic engagement and community, and the profound influence of digital marketing and digital marketing research tools on consumers-as-brands.

CMST 3530: Digital Rhetoric

This course focuses on analyzing how technologies alter audience, author, text, rhetorical strategies, message, and channels of communication. Students will become better versed in criticism and consumption of digital texts and media.

CMST 3590: Advanced Topics in Media Studies

Students select 1-2 of the below course options.

CMST 3550: Documentary in the Digital Age

This class outlines the evolution of the practices, technologies, and ethics of visual documentation as a means to understand how documentary filmmaking is being changed in and through digital media. The class will move historically through the development of documentary media beginning with early ethnographic films and documentaries. At each point in this history we will reflect on technological, social, and political shifts in filmmaking. Students will be expected to conceive of and execute a short documentary film project in small groups and will be asked to reflect on how their film engages with the theoretical topics discussed in this course. Training on the basics of filmmaking will be provided in class, though students will also be expected to master these skills through practice outside of class.

CMST 3555: Sound Studies: The Podcast

This course will introduce students to cultural, technological and historical understandings of the podcast as an art form and will also cover theories of sound in Media Studies. Students will learn the basics of capturing and editing audio, and crafting stories. And they will display these skills in the final project for the course: a multi-media podcast, designed, planned and produced in groups.

CMST 3590: Project Citizen: Digital Storytelling

In this course, students will examine political divides in America by identifying and interviewing stakeholders in a locale (purview) different from their own to better understand opportunities and possible solutions for a return to more civil discourse. As part of this process, students will develop original video and audio documentary content examining how issues, political and cultural, play in and across different regions and populations in our deeply divided country.

Students select 1-2 of the below course options.

CMST 3510: Wires and Empires

In this course, students will first be introduced to key international communications theories and will then be asked to consider whether the introduction of Web 2.0, inexpensive mobile technology, and other recent digital media advances are reinforcing or disrupting existing patterns of globalization.

CMST 3525: Social Media Management

This course explores the origins of social media and how it shapes our interactions with brands, people, and governments.

CMST 3565: Business of Media (IINC)

The course will develop an understanding of the business side of the media industry. We will look at economic models for publications and media companies and consider the future of media and journalism in the digital age. This exploration will be conducted through the lens of power and privilege. Mass communication is described as “one to many” message delivery. In this class, you will also learn about the “one” in that description. The concept of power and privilege in modern society will be infused into an exploration of the firms and people who own and operate media outlets. You will see how that ownership has been consolidated through mergers enabled by changes in laws and regulations brought about through the influence of those firms and people. We will look at efforts to make media egalitarian and the dropping of barriers to entry in the digital age.

CMST 3571: The Rise of Cable News: From CNN to YouTube

This course will trace the cultural, political, and technical development of cable TV news and its prominence in the late twentieth century. The course will also address pre-cable and post-broadcast paradigms to develop a broad historical lens for understanding the influence of policy, technology, and political climate in the creation and performance of news.

CMST 3575: Citizen Media

This course will look at the cultural, political, and technological significance of the rise of “citizen media” and its expression in constructs of ‘alternative media’ ‘participatory culture’ and ‘user-generated.

CMST 35XX: Applied Media Production (AMP)

A 1-unit AMP media production skills course in topics ranging from video production to podcasting. The course will focus on a student’s topic of choice in conjunction with a subject chosen by the professor. Each section will focus on a particular production skill (e.g., audio, video or digital production).