Digital Media: Amusing ourselves to death? How to teach in the digital age (original) (raw)

(2017) PhD Seminar: Media Studies Theory and Literature (Social Science Approach)

Theory is the foundation of knowledge production. Drawing on literature from the fields of media studies, communication, sociology, and management, this course aims to equip PhD students with skills to learn, use, and build media theories. The course has three major components: 1. We start with the foundational theorists and theories, broadly in social science and specifically in media and communication studies. We will examine whether and how these theorists and theories remain relevant in the digital age. We will discuss how digital media have challenged conventional modes of theorizing. 2. In the second part, we will draw on milestone studies to showcase how theories are applied, criticized, appropriated, revised, and reclaimed, crossing disciplinary and national boundaries. 3. In the third part, students are encouraged to engage with media theories through review and research. This course is one of the two RTF 395 courses on key theories of communication and media studies. This fall semester seminar focuses on foundational scholars and theories on communication contexts, processes, and audiences. The readings reflect the diverse theoretical streams and approaches in communication and media studies: historical, critical, and political economy approaches in social science, including the Chicago School, the Frankfurt School, the Columbia School, and the Toronto School. Students will be guided step-by-step to achieve the following goals: A1. Demonstrate a solid understanding of: a. Major theoretical approaches and their confluence in media studies, especially as applicable to recent advancements in digital media studies b. Modes and processes of theorizing media and society A2. Develop skills to apply major media theories to specific research topics A3. Recognize various opportunities, challenges, and implications of doing and communicating media theories in a rapidly changing digital media landscape

Changing Societies, Changing Media: Challenges for Communication Theory, Research and Education

The current era of economic crisis and political turmoil comes in the aftermath of four decades of social and economic change, commonly lumped under the heading "globalization." Critics of this era typically refer to its guiding ethos as neo-liberalism, which broadly refers to an ideology of market deregulation that was typically sold politically with the promise that individuals would experience great freedom of choice in an enhanced consumer marketplace. The political marketing slogan for this broad transformation of public and private life is typically a variation on "free markets, free people." The global trend to deregulate markets even touched many once protected public goods and services such as health care, education, public broadcasting funding and public utilities. As these policy reforms swept through various societies, they were accompanied by a number of secondary (and often unimagined) consequences, including: the fragmentation of social institutions, the individuation or separation of people from those social institutions, and the gradual replacement of modern social structures based on groups, class, and common memberships and status with more fluid social relations, ushering in an era that has been described variously as "liquid modernity" (Baumann 2000) and the "networked society" (Castells 2010). Noting that these networked forms of social economic and political relations are often made stable and effective through innovative communication technologies, Bimber (2003) has termed the emerging era a "post bureaucratic society." This paper explores how this broad reorganization of society and personal life affects communication processes and how we study them. The fragmentation and personalization of social structures --along with the proliferation of communication technologies and information sources --have changed communication processes in many societies. There are, of course, also important variations across those societies. In addition, the legacy media of modern society continue to exist, which may distract scholars from attending to what is changing. For example, there are still plenty of newspapers and television news programs carrying the messages from elites sources and the spin from legions of communication and image consultants that Jay Blumler and his colleagues associated with the last era of political communication (Blumler and Kavanagh 1999). But those institutional authorities and their spin-doctors face more challenging messaging and targeting problems due to less reachable and less responsive audiences in more dispersed societies, resulting in soaring costs and diminishing returns.