Media, Culture & Society

Society exists not only by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication. Study of societal uses and consequences of mass media must go hand in hand with the study of the communication industries involved in the production and dissemination of information. Society is understood and developed to a great degree by its media and culture industries; its communication industries provide the images, symbols and vocabulary by which people interpret and respond to their social environment. This course engages in historical, empirical, interpretive and critical investigations of changes and trends in mass communications, providing general accounts of the formative influences that shape the media, the way media affects social behavior and belief systems, and how the ideology of a group is produced and reproduced in its cultural practices. It will also include an examination of current modes of discourse that bear on media industries such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, feminism, and deconstruction; an analysis of recent changes in media industries; and an analysis of the relationship of media organizations and markets to the structures of power and influence in society.