1 - 10 of 119 results for: COMM

Our world is being transformed by media technologies that change how we interact with one another and perceived the world around us. These changes are all rooted in communication practices, and their consequences touch on almost all aspects of life. In COMM 1 we will examine the effects of media technologies on psychological life, on industry, and on communities local and global through theorizing and demonstrations and critiques of a wide range of communication products and services.

The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.

American democracy is increasingly polarized and dysfunctional. Levels of public trust in the Congress and politicians are at virtually all-time lows, and so is the ability of members of different parties to work together in Washington, D.C., and in many state capitols, to find solutions to our major public policy problems. Much is written about the growing polarization of American society, yet public opinion polling suggests that the public is not as bitterly divided as the political class. [This is a SOPHOMORE COLLEGE course. Visit soco.stanford.edu for full details.]

Digital technologies have had a profound influence on our economy, the ways we communicate, and the ways in which we work. This course will provide a lens through which to understand digital labor and digital work today. We will explore the ideological and cultural values of Silicon Valley and their role in shaping the new business models of the Internet Age (such as crowdsourcing, the sharing economy, and humans-as-a-service). We will examine the past, present, and future of mechanisms of workplace control (from clocks to algorithmic management) and the implications of the digital turn on spatial and material dimensions of labor. Finally, we will turn our attention toward possible futures of work, given the increasing presence of automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace. By engaging with social scientific analyses and popular media, students will leave the course with a greater appreciation of worker perspectives and challenges in the digital era.

This course will provide an introduction to information inequalities arising in the digital era. By working through various literature in media such as media economics and digital divide, we will explore how content personalization via the algorithms could reproduce or amplify long-standing inequalities in race, class, and gender. This course also functions as an introduction to entry-level data science whereby you develop basic programming skills (Python) and apply them to your group project. By the end of the course, you will have developed skills to think critically of technology¿s impact on our democracy and to present evidence-based analysis of your research interests. No prior programming experience is necessary to take this class.

Techniques of news reporting and writing. The value and role of news in democratic societies. Gateway class to journalism. Prerequisite for all COMM 177/277 classes. Limited enrollment. Preference to COMM majors.

(Graduate students register for COMM 206.) Conceptual and practical concerns underlying commonly used quantitative approaches, including experimental, survey, content analysis, and field research in communication. Pre- or corequisite: STATS 60 or consent of instructor. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)

This course aims to provide a survey of various media and their role in the discursive construction of gender in and through culture. The first three weeks serve as an introduction to the historical and sociopolitical dimensions of gender, its intersection with media, and theoretical approaches to understanding it and political approaches to challenging it. Beginning with historical constructions of the gender binary, Foucault's Herculine Barbin - an unearthed diary of a French hermaphrodite who lived an adolescent life in a Catholic orphanage for girls from about 1860-1870, is reclassified as a man, and commits suicide - provides a provocative look at the historical construction of gender binaries. nnnThe remainder of the course then tackles a range of media and examples of how they portray gender as well as examples of how they may be used to subvert oppressive gender roles or binaries, focusing on: the novel, film, music videos, news, and social media. Far from exhaustive, the readings and the topics covered are to provide a better, broader, but still-limited understanding of how media and culture construct gender, and how this also dramatically impacts the lives of queer and gender nonconforming individuals. For this reason, while the course does deal extensively with notions of masculinity, sexualization and objectification of, or the effects of sexism on, cisgendered women, a heavy focus of the course across many topics is on transgender individuals in media. These individuals, like Herculine in her time, unsettle this simplistic opposition through their very being and representation in public

(Graduate students register for COMM 208.) The process of communication theory construction including a survey of social science paradigms and major theories of communication. Recommended: 1 or PSYCH 1.