Course Description:
As members of a Western contemporary society we spend hundreds of hours
listening to the radio, watching television, or reading newspapers, magazines,
and billboards. However, most of us go about all these experiences unaware
of the powerful role the mass media play in our everyday lives; that is,
we are passive audiences. Introduction to Mass Communication (COM 2343)
is designed to change this by developing your critical skills when interacting
with the mass media; in other words, by the end of the semester you will
be an ACTIVE receiver of media content.
Along the course we will explore diverse methods for media analysis and
criticism such as semiotics, psychoanalysis, marxism, feminism, and genre
analysis among others. We will also learn to identify and critically analyze
how the media deal with issues of race, class, and gender. On the basis
of approaching mass communication as a PROCESS, I have divided the course
in three parts: the sender, the message, and the receiver. However, along
the program it will be clear that these three elements are absolutely inter-dependant,
and that trying to study one without the other yields a very limited understanding
of the mass media as communication processes.
Specific Objectives
1) To understand the mass media in terms of mass communication processes.
2) To gain a holistic picture of the mass media as major economic and political
powers that play important roles in shaping our societies.
3) To explore, from different angles, the process of mass media production.
4) To explore diverse methodologies of textual analysis and how they can
be applied to media messages.
5) To understand the different ways in which audiences interact with media
messages and media producers.
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