/ SOCY 1100a, Introduction to Media Studies Staff

Description

In this class we will focus on questions anchored on the fundamental understanding of media studies as an interdisciplinary field. As a field of study, media studies is focused on examining how media produces, distributes, consumes, and interprets our lived and imagined realities. Additional it elucidates how media structures shape culture, politics, identity and everyday life. Rather than talking about media as neutral arbiters of information, we will ask how media work, who/what controls them and with what consequences. As such, this class engages with ideas of ideology, empire, political economy, the public sphere, while thinking through how these unfold within different media platforms. We will broadly look at traditional media (newspapers, radio, television), digital media (social media platforms, streaming companies, and emerging media (AI-generated content, algorithmic systems). The class is thus an introduction to current debates and thoughts with an emphasis not just on content but also in technologies, institutions, audiences, and power relations. At the end of the semester, the class will think through how all of these questions unfold with music genres such as afrohouse and afrobeats, K-pop, and Mexico’s narcocorridos. 0 Course cr HTBA