COMM 3200

New Media and Society

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

Media and culture are undergoing a series of transformations as new technologies, new forms of entertainment, new venues for political debate, and new models of public discourse emerge online. This course looks at how the social, political, and cultural landscape is changing in relation to digital media and information technologies. We develop critical resources to better understand the history of these new technologies and communicative forms, the economics behind them, the policies developing around them, and the sociocultural shifts from which they have emerged, and that they have helped provoke. We will aim to discard commonplace assumptions about these tools and phenomena, to ask deeper questions about their impact on society.

When Offered Spring, summer.

Distribution Category (CA-AG)

• Develop analytical tools for understanding the complex information society around them.
• Understand how the cultural, political, and economic environment are changing with the emergence of new media and digital technologies.
• Encounter, understand, and speak pressing contemporary controversies around new media (e.g., privacy, copyright, labor, expertise).
• Develop a voice on these issues, in relevant new media formats.

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