Academic Calendar - 2024
Western University Academic Calendar. - 2024
Media and Communication Studies
This survey course introduces students to the critical study of mediated communication and explores the ways technology, information, and media interact with culture and society. Topics may include: cultural industries, political economy, identity/diversity, promotional culture, the information society, political communication, journalism studies, and social media.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 1021F/G and/or MEDIACOM 1022F/G.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 1.00
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The first of two half-courses that introduces students to the critical study of mediated communication and explores the ways technology, information, and media interact with culture and society. Topics may include: cultural industries, political economy, identity/diversity, promotional culture, the information society, political communication, journalism studies, and social media.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 1020E.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The second of two half-courses that introduces students to the critical study of mediated communication and explores the ways technology, information, and media interact with culture and society. Topics may include: cultural industries, political economy, identity/diversity, promotional culture, the information society, political communication, journalism studies, and social media.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 1020E.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This writing-intensive course provides first-year FIMS students with foundational skills in scholarly research, appropriate evaluation of information sources, and textual, visual, and media analysis. In a combination of lectures and tutorials, students will produce short projects that reflect a number of modes of interpretation and analyze a variety of media.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media permeate every nook and cranny of our daily lives. This course examines how we use media to shape our world through social networking, advertising and branding, activism and politics, privacy and surveillance, celebrity and entertainment culture, sounds and music, representation and identity, and global news and media.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces students to the technical and creative production of mediated communication. They will learn basic production principles and use these to analyze and create audio, visual and digital content related to and derived from mass communication through a variety of in-class exercises and creative projects.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The course examines communication throughout history. It explores the relationship of communication media and technologies to society and culture. The course covers the history of different communication media, such as the printing press, telegraph, radio and television broadcasting, film and sound recording, and the Internet.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will introduce students to a variety of methods for collecting, analysing, and interpreting data for research in media studies. Students will explore tools and techniques that support inquiry into problems and questions of a digital era. Approaches will include content analysis, big data, interviews, ethnography, and decolonizing methods.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 3000A/B.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours and 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces basic concepts of political economy to the study of contemporary media. By examining corporate, public and alternative media formations, it provides students with the tools to analyze intersections of power and wealth in societies and economies increasingly centered on the profitable exploitation of culture and information.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces students to the concepts and debates surrounding the intersections of health and media/information. Topics may include the social determinants of health and the media; the interrelationship between pharmaceutical marketing and advertising; Indigenous health issues and media coverage; the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth; and global pandemics.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2165F if taken in 2016-17, 2017-18 or 2018-19 or the former MIT 2165G in 2018-19.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the role of media and visual culture in shaping our environment, worldviews, and senses of self and identity, including issues related to gender, sexuality, class, race and ethnicity, and ability and disability.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Examines the role of advertising, promotion and marketing in our culture, the relation of these practices to a 'consumer society', the connections between advertising and propaganda, the ways marketing may or may not be used for purposes other than profit, and how markets and marketing influence media.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the relationships between media, social movements, and social change. By exploring struggles over issues such as democracy, the environment, human rights, gender equality, class relations, and race and ethnic relations, we will map the ways that participants use media, and the obstacles they confront.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Popular culture is shaped by industrial complexes such as the major ¬ film studios and music labels, the videogames business, comic book publishing, and radio and television networks. This course examines such cultural industries, considering the role of audiences and fans, and the myths and realities of creative cultural work.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Investigates some of the controversies about, and skills of, journalism, studying both mainstream news services and citizen journalism, and providing an introduction to journalistic writing and news production, and the everyday practices of various types of news organizations.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, virtual worlds, online games, networked communities, new media and e-learning. It examines topics including on online identity, gender in cyberspace, videogame culture, Web 2.0, digital design, surveillance and privacy.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 2310A/B.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides an introduction to some of the legal aspects of media, including issues of copyright and intellectual property, access to information and privacy, slander and libel, and also discusses the ethical questions confronting media and information professionals.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Discover how access to and control of behind-the-scenes information is a major force in our lives. This course explores how search engines harvest "big" data from users and use it to map, analyze, and exploit patterns of online behaviour for marketing, government and corporate intelligence, and other purposes.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2376F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course is an introduction to the role played by communication and culture in international and transnational relations. Through the use of theories and examples, we examine a range of issues related to power relations, economic development and cultural change using readings and concepts from communication studies, international relations, sociology, and other disciplines.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the impact of popular music as a vital part of media culture with topics such as the music business, music and gender, digital music, popular music on television, and music celebrities.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2350F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course considers how media of all kinds handle high-stakes issues. By analyzing and writing about documentary, fiction, film, graphic texts etc., students will learn to trust their own voices. During and after a war there is a struggle to define what it is about: a war for the war.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 2161F if taken in 2015-2016, the former MIT 3440F if taken in 2017-2018, 2019-2020, 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The course explores traditions within media and cultural theory, including traditions such as cultural studies, semiotics, hermeneutics, poststructuralism and postmodernism. These traditions arise from debates around such issues as: audience/reader activity, diversity, context, texts and textual determination, ideology and hegemony, discourse, and socio-cultural constructions.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 2500A/B THE MEANING OF TECHNOLOGY: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
Exploration of a number of technologies that lie behind and fuel the technocultural imagination. Introduces contemporary technologies from both a technical and cultural/historical point of view. Topics include: technological systems, issues of technical visualization, representation and interactivity, natural vs. artificial languages, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural and virtual environments, technology as social imperative and cultural metaphor.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course emphasizes the development and manipulation of sound sources, especially music, within a mixed media context. Students will be introduced to music-specific technologies and concepts that can be applied to a multimedia environment. Previous music experience is not required, however students will acquire some musical skills and study certain musical concepts.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students will develop coding skills in HTML and CSS, while learning foundational architecture and user-experience principles. They will explore the cultural significance and theoretical implications of this medium, focusing on design and production of information for websites, which communicate through the integrated use of text, images, and other media.
Antirequisite(s): Computer Science 2033A/B, Digital Communication 2203A/B.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces the student to the concepts of visual literacy. Study concentrates on the elements and principles of basic two dimensional designs, visual communication and its objective theoretical application. Current industry standard vector-based, bitmap-based and presentation software applications are introduced to allow the student to practice and exercise visual literacy.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 2204A/B.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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An introductory course in digital video production that will engage students in the production, history, and theories of moving images. Through the integration of lectures, screenings, and studio assignments, students will obtain the necessary critical and technical skills to produce short, creative digital video projects.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 2660A/B if taken in 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 or 2013-14.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The subject of a Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the third or fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Course Weight: 1.00
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The subject of a Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the third or fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course addresses a variety of issues pertaining to a public sphere for free and democratic flows of information. How do information circuits influence the production, organization, and dissemination of information, whether print, digital, electronic, audio or visual? How do such circuits configure public access, knowledge production, and cultural representations?
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Our world is fractured by inequalities in capacities involving the means of communication. This course examines such disparities using a political economy approach. It assesses the international interplay of power, wealth and information in the context transnational capitalism, nation-state relations, and an array of mediators (institutions, organizations, and technologies) shaping our emerging world (dis)order.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3130F/G THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFORMATION: NETWORKED CAPITALISM
The course digs beneath the hype about the "new economy" to examine the real dynamics of commodification that are emerging from the interaction between digital networks and high capitalism. Topics include dot.commercialization, virtual advertising, open/closed networks, Web content industries, portals and search engines, knowbots and market agents, and piracy.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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What economic conditions influence production inside the entertainment industries? How is digitalization changing the politics of entertainment production? What potential does digitalization hold for innovation and cultural diversity? How are Canadian businesses faring inside the global entertainment sector? These are among the key questions that this course aims to answer.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3437G if taken in 2009-10, the former MIT 3871F/G in 2010-11 or 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3133F/G NET-WORK: LABOUR AND PROFIT ON FACEBOOK, FLICKR, YOUTUBE AND WEB 2.0
This course will explore the impact that User-Generated Content, Social Networks & Immaterial Labour have had on Autonomist Marxist theory. The course will consider the changes taking place in the nature of the labour process, the products being produced by this shift to immaterial work, and the influence that this shift has had on Autonomist Marxism.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3771F if taken in 2009-10, 2010-11 or 2011-12, Digital Communication 3205F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course offers students the critical tools to explore how shifting modes of representation from oral songs and stories to information technology, effect our cultural conceptions of 'the outlaw' and of justice. The course incorporates a theory of the outlaw as an extraordinary criminal caught in a liminal threshold 'outside the law.'
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course investigates how human sexuality and sexual identity are represented through various media (film, advertising, television, print and electronic media). We will look at how media sources both reinforce and challenge dominant understandings of concepts commonly associated with sexuality, including masculinity and femininity, and heterosexuality and homosexuality.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2375F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the role of media in shaping our understanding of mental health and mental illness. Students will produce traditional, academic assignments as well as work aimed at nonacademic audiences.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3432F if taken in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 or 2018-19.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course turns a critical and analytical eye to public relations, recognizing the role PR practitioners play in creating, shaping and disseminating information. It offers practical strategies to deal with public relations claims and releases but also explores the ways such information affects a society not widely schooled in the techniques and goals of PR practitioners.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3857F/G if taken in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020 or 2020-2021.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines some of the issues that arise from our commercial – and often noncommercial – advertising activities. Topics include the psycho-social, economic, political and cultural impacts of advertising such as advertising’s effects on consumer markets, its influence on our purchase and life-style decisions, the possible perpetuation of stereotypes and other promises and perils pertaining to this industry.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides a critical survey of issues related to children's advertising, marketing, and consumer culture. The historic rise of children's marketing, the value advertisers place on children, and contemporary controversial debates will be investigated and located within broad theoretical, cultural, social, and institutional contexts.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3402F if taken in 2009-10 or 2010-11, the former MIT 3404F if taken in Intersession in 2010, or the former MIT 3402G in 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course considers the television industry's address to women viewers, focusing on the multichannel transition and the post-network period. We will consider the roles played by genre, character and content in making "women's television", and will pay particular attention to the medium's ongoing dialogue with feminism.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3435F if taken in 2010-11 or 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will apply a variety of feminist theories to investigate the construction of gender by a range of historical and contemporary media - newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film, the Internet and advertising.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Why do we celebrate stars? What can the analysis of celebrity reveal about modern ideas of self and individual identity? This course introduces critical work on the phenomenon of stardom, develops case studies of individual film, television, and popular music stars, and investigates the institutional and industrial processes that have created celebrities.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course interrogates media images of masculinity ca. 1946-76. It will examine the long-lasting social and cultural consequences of the remarkable shifts in the construction and representation of Western masculinity which took place between the end of the Second World War and the rise of the Counterculture. The course focuses on gender, power, and culture.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The class will examine the idea of audience as it is conceptualized in communication theory and research. The course will focus on theoretical readings and debates about the nature and definition of the audience, and look at the function of the audience for the media industry and for culture.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3215F/G KILLER CULTURE: WAR AND THE MEDIATION OF REALITY IN THE 20TH-21ST CENTURIES
War is the machine that created many of the technologies that we depend on in this century. This course considers the ways in which we sift war through media filters, the stories we tell ourselves (and the way we mediate those stories) about gender and power, truth and myth, the body and spirit, the technosphere and biosphere. Using a wide variety of media products, the course will examine the mediation of high-tech information systems, global armament, and the mechanization of death.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the historical development and social significance of the contemporary culture of consumption. After exploring its history and dynamics, among other subjects, it looks at advertising and marketing, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) applications, globalization, and strategies of resistance.
Prerequisite(s): MEDIACOM 2100F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The formation of public opinion and its role in democratic society. Theories of attitude and opinion formation and persuasion. Study of propaganda. Current issues in public opinion and the "manufacture of consent."
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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From Trinity to Postmodernity, from the culture of containment to the contamination of culture, this course explores not only the history of America after WWII, but also the impact of the Atom Bomb, the Cold War, and their continuing influence on the formation of American ideology and identity. Using the twin themes of confinement and resistance, the course will focus primarily on media such as literature and film, but will also consider representative examples from journalism, the visual arts, and architecture.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines various forms of media convergence (industrial, regulatory, technological, and cultural) and how interaction between television and digital media can alter sociocultural understandings of mass media industries and technologies. In addition, it examines the evolution of a formerly passive audience into active 'produsers' and investigates the democratizing potential of interactive and user-generated media.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3404F if taken in 2009-10, 2010-11 or 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course considers factors crucial to successful functioning of human communities. It reviews problems identified during earlier study in order to propose solutions, whether ideals, dreams, or probabilities supported by information, ecological, technological, and media theories, applying landmark texts to the worlds of present and future.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 4100F/G if taken in 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23; the former MIT 3405F/G if taken in 2023-2024.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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What is history if not a reconstructed image of the past? This course examines the ways in which photography has shaped our idea of history; how specific photographs ground history by turning the world into a picture. The political significance of this transformation will be examined through specific visual case studies.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Traces the development of the idea of "entertainment" in commercial radio and television, and situates the institutions of broadcast entertainment within wider debates around leisure, popular taste and culture. Theoretical and historical approaches to radio and television will be introduced.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines representations of Hollywood in film, television, and print. From Day of the Locust (1939) to Tropic Thunder (2008), we explore Hollywood as a model for what constitutes the "real" in contemporary culture, and how these representations inform the American political landscape and constructions of sexuality, desire, and identity.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Our reliance on private transport has produced a landscape dominated by the automobile: an environment to which we are culturally blind. This course is not a strict history of the car. It is a sustained examination of how a particular technology can become intertwined with a society's political and economic processes.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course aims to ground students in the historical development in the methods of how propaganda and persuasion have been utilized in print and visual culture, spanning Greco-Roman art and rhetoric, contemporary use of diverse media, and how new techniques were developed alongside new forms of media technology (such as blogging).
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Internet memes are more than just cute pictures of cats with silly captions – they're arguably one of the most important ways we communicate with each other online. This course explores the history and development of internet memes and critically examines their meaning and impact in modern society.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3652G if taken in 2014-2015 or the former MIT 3652F if taken in 2019- 2020, 2020-2021.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3282F/G COMIC BOOK CULTURE: FROM PULP FICTION TO POST MODERN LEGITIMACY
This course will run along three parallel tracks: it will examine the history of comic books and how they engaged such political issues as World War II and the cultural revolution of the 1960s; it will show how comics have crossed over into other popular media, mainly film; and it will look at comic books as a serious aesthetic medium, trying to understand them as a form of sequential art.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the emergence and consolidation of modern advertising from the 1880s until the 1980s. It examines the development and growth of ad agencies, advertising practices, and commercial media, with a focus on iconic ad campaigns. The course deals with advertising’s impact on popular culture, as seen in novels, film, and television. It also probes how governments, politicians, and other social actors used advertising to re-configure 20th century public life.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3403G if taken in 2011-12, 2012-2013, 2014-2015 or 2015-2016, the former MIT 3403F in 2012-2013, 2014-2015 or 2016-2017.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This class takes artists as working people and examines the production of commercial popular music as a set of work processes, focusing on legal, discursive, technological, and economic contexts. We explore the relations of performers—especially recording artists—to their work, their personae, their audiences, and their intellectual property.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3439F if taken in 2014-15, the former MIT 3439G in 2015-16 or 2016-17.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Liz Phair's 1993 recording Exile in Guyville was upfront in acknowledging what female and male fans of popular music, especially rock'n'roll know but don't necessarily want to admit: rock'n'roll is a "guy thing." But is it? This course explores meanings, constructions and representations of gender in popular music of the 20th and 21st centuries, including but not limited to rock'n'roll. The course is taught from a media studies perspective, so no formal musical knowledge is expected.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will explore how music videos have served as a space for the interaction between art and advertising. It will investigate the music video's cultural, sexual, and ideological influences on a generation of television viewers who have been molded into an ideal demographic for the consumption of both media and consumer goods.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3651F/G if taken in 2010-11, 2011-2012, 2012-2013 or 2013-2014.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course uses feminist theoretical perspectives to explore the following topics: virtual feminist communities and cyberspaces; representation of women in education, media and information professions; the uses of the Internet for networking, feminist activism and community development; teleworking and female entrepreneurship; training for information technologies; issues of demography and diversity.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3371F/G FROM ARCADES TO ESPORTS: VIDEO GAME CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INDUSTRY
Video and computer games have, over the last thirty years, revolutionized popular culture, digital technology and the entertainment industry. At the same time they have provoked intense controversy over issues from game addiction to virtual violence to digital gender. This course gives an overview of the history of interactive gaming, its economic dynamics, the social formations it is catalyzing and the new theories of aesthetics, simulation and play it has generated.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 3206F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides hands-on experience with building, evaluating, and using social media tools such as blogs, wikis, and social networking websites within an organizational context. Relevant issues such as user privacy, social media policies, effective planning and implementation, and organizational impact will be addressed.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3852G if taken in 2011-2012, Digital Communication 3209F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Social networking has as long history as human civilization itself. In today's online environment, Twitter and Facebook have altered the social landscape. Students will explore the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of social networking, and study its contexts and social issues such as bullying, anonymity, addiction, anxiety, and narcissism.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2374F/G, Digital Communication 2200F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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An exploration of the importance of electronic communications and learning technologies to society, politics and culture. Topics include: theories relating communications to social organization; political economy of information and media; power, privacy, equity, access, gender, emergent cultures/ identity in cyberspace; changing knowledge and learning in an age of convergent communications.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines how relations between humans and technology create different kinds of cultures or "technocultures” and looks at early text-based technologies as well as image-based social media platforms and robotics/AI. Students will acquire cutting-edge knowledge of new trends and phenomena linked to social embedded in technosocial spaces.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Can the law protect artist and audience? Better yet, what are we trying to protect? We will use this perspective to consider legal liability the following contexts: incitement in lyrics, lyrics used as evidence in a criminal case, liability for copyright infringement; invasion of privacy; defamation; and even censorship.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3431B if taken in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, the former MIT 3431A if taken in 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 1-3 hour screening, 2 lecture/seminar hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 1-3 hour screening, 2 lecture/seminar hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 1-3 hour screening, 2 lecture/seminar hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Without media policy, your smartphone would be just a pricey paperweight. This course provides an introduction to media and information technology policies, primarily in Canada and the U.S. It includes training in understanding legal documents and procedures, and provides tools for exercising power and influence in the media and beyond.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3441F if taken in 2019-2020, 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This introductory course explores audio as a media platform. Students acquire skills in recording, editing, and mixing audio talk content. Using journalistic principles, they will learn about storytelling, interviewing, and content structure, and will apply these skills to produce an audio story and pitch and create an original podcast.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will introduce students to the practice and principles of mobile journalism. Students will learn the basics of journalistic storytelling, including what a story is, how to learn to plan, research, shoot, write, voice, edit and share video stories using smartphones and free or low cost apps.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3470A if taken in 2017-18, 2018-2019, the former MIT 3470B if taken in 2019-2020 or 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the ideas, methods and politics of making—from hobby, craft, repair and DIY cultures, to the more entrepreneurial ‘makerspaces’ and ‘fab labs’ promoted by education and business. This hands-on, collaborative course explores making, breaking and taking apart through in-class projects and individual final projects.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3430B if taken in 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This introductory course directly and productively engages with the photographic situation, grounded in its history and its social and aesthetic practice. Exploring notions of reality and representation, history and politics through photographic practice and experimentation, students will investigate technical and aesthetic approaches to photography as medium, message, and technology.
Antirequisite(s): Studio Art 2652B; the former MIT 3665B if taken in 2016-17, 2018-19, the former MIT 3663B if taken in 2022-23.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in Year 3 or Year 4 of a FIMS module.
Extra Information: 3 hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course teaches students to write and interpret more complex pieces of journalism from a variety of sources. Students will study different styles of feature writing, from the point of view of both a consumer of news and a journalist. Students will also pitch story ideas and practice turning their ideas into engaging features.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3870G if taken in 2009-10, 2010-11 or 2011-12 or Writing 2203F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Explores the relationship between media, documentary, and representation. Using cultural and media theory, we will explore 'documentary' practice in cinema, performance, photography, the museum, oral history, print, and digital media. Students apply critical readings to produce and critique one (or two) small documentary projects. No production experience expected.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course aims to give students an overview of the types of stories written by an arts journalist working for a newspaper or website, such as reviews, columns, features, and profiles. The course will consider solutions to problems specific to arts journalism and will examine ethical questions peculiar to arts journalism.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The purpose of this class is for students to become proficient at writing opinion pieces, for example columns. The web is an opinion medium – readers go online seeking informed commentary on the issues of the day, so we will explore the difference between mere ranting and a reasoned argument.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3856G if taken in 2015-16, 2016-2017, 2017-18 or 2018-19.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Activists often consider corporate or state owned media unfriendly terrain. But such media can provide a crucial way to 'get the message out'. Using the ideas of experienced media activists, and examples from the practice of today's social movements, this course investigates how to win the battle for public opinion in mainstream media.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the definition, history, theory and practice of 'alternative' media, and its differences from and relationship to 'mainstream' corporate and state supported media. These issues are explored across a variety of media to critically assess the possibilities and limits of alternative media in enriching cultural diversity and democratic practice.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores how activists use digital technologies to organize, protest, evade surveillance, and share information. It considers what contemporary digital activism reveals about democracy and how it functions, the media, citizenship, and technological potentials and limitations. Students will engage with content in a variety of formats and project-based work.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 2305F/G if taken in 2022-23 or the former MIT 3954F/G if taken in 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the history and representation of genocide and state violence, including media coverage, truth and reconciliation processes, the politics of commemoration, and atrocity prevention. Case studies include the Canadian residential school system, the Holocaust, the Salvadoran Civil War, and the Rwandan Genocide.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the relation between food, media, and social justice. You will learn about corporate/industrial and alternative models of food production, and then you will use your critical and creative skills to respond to what you've learned. Themes include genetic modification, factory farming, body image, animal welfare, technology and ethics, globalization, and alternative or grassroots responses.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 hour film screening.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will explore the history of student activism from the medieval period to the present, with a specific focus on the past 100 years in Europe and North America. We will look at the roots of student organization and dissent in the university itself, and will exam impact of student agitation and resistance on broader movements for social change, such as anti-war, civil rights and labor movements. We will examine strategies and tactics of student movements, and debate the usefulness of student resistance in furthering the public interest.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides students with the critical tools needed to understand the use of media and its impact on the recognition and restitution of human rights claims. We examine various visual practices (documentation, archiving, witnessing, advocacy, and surveillance) and a range of visual imagery (video, photography, drawings, and monuments).
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3772F/G if taken in 2016-17, 2017-18, 2021-22, 2022-23.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Recently, popular discourse on the digital revolution, and its facilitation of a colour-blind future, has been undermined by more sensible debates over the connections between race and technology. This course will not only explore those connections, but investigate issues related to socio-economic and racial exploitation under contemporary capitalism.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines journalism and the local conditions that enable progressive social change, as well as those that constrain it. Case studies from the Middle East, China and Africa may be reviewed. Students will also gain an understanding of the role media plays in the process of globalization.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3437F/G if taken in 2010-11, 2011-2012, 2012-2013 or 2013-2014.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course is about social ecology and settler-colonialism from the early-modern period to the present, and will unpack the history of imperialism in the Americas and the stories used to legitimate it. Topics include primitive accumulation, eco-socialism, and armed struggle.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3952G if taken in 2020-2021.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission identifies the media as intrinsic to Indigenous reconciliation, the media remains a site through which the legacy of settler colonialism circulates, perpetuating damaging representations and restricting access to alternative narratives. This course explores the systemic effects of this legacy and identifies potential medial solutions.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students will, in consultation with a full-time faculty member in FIMS who has agreed to act as supervisor, develop an appropriate plan of study, do the research and complete the writing of a 50-page paper, or equivalent, that connects work done in the field during the completion of the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G, with ideas or themes critical to Media and the Public Interest. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 3951F/G.
Prerequisite(s): The student must find a full-time FIMS faculty member willing to supervise.
Corequisite(s): the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G.
Course Weight: 1.00
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Students will, in consultation with a full-time faculty member in FIMS who has agreed to act as supervisor, develop an appropriate plan of study, do the research and complete the writing of a 50-page paper, or equivalent, that connects work done in the field during the completion of the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G, with ideas or themes critical to Media and the Public Interest. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 3950E.
Prerequisite(s): The student must find a full-time FIMS faculty member willing to supervise.
Corequisite(s): the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The subject of an Advanced Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program and permission of the Faculty.
Course Weight: 1.00
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The subject of an Advanced Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program and permission of the Faculty.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course combines work in the field of public interest media, participation in a special seminar and theoretically informed paper or project based on the practicum experience.
Prerequisite(s): Restricted to students in the fourth year of a module in Media and the Public Interest
Extra Information: A maximum of 15 hours of class time and a minimum of 40 hours placement. The MPI Practicum will be evaluated on a Pass/Fail basis with the option of a Pass with Distinction.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies
This survey course introduces students to the critical study of mediated communication and explores the ways technology, information, and media interact with culture and society. Topics may include: cultural industries, political economy, identity/diversity, promotional culture, the information society, political communication, journalism studies, and social media.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 1021F/G and/or MEDIACOM 1022F/G.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 1.00
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The first of two half-courses that introduces students to the critical study of mediated communication and explores the ways technology, information, and media interact with culture and society. Topics may include: cultural industries, political economy, identity/diversity, promotional culture, the information society, political communication, journalism studies, and social media.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 1020E.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The second of two half-courses that introduces students to the critical study of mediated communication and explores the ways technology, information, and media interact with culture and society. Topics may include: cultural industries, political economy, identity/diversity, promotional culture, the information society, political communication, journalism studies, and social media.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 1020E.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This writing-intensive course provides first-year FIMS students with foundational skills in scholarly research, appropriate evaluation of information sources, and textual, visual, and media analysis. In a combination of lectures and tutorials, students will produce short projects that reflect a number of modes of interpretation and analyze a variety of media.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media permeate every nook and cranny of our daily lives. This course examines how we use media to shape our world through social networking, advertising and branding, activism and politics, privacy and surveillance, celebrity and entertainment culture, sounds and music, representation and identity, and global news and media.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces students to the technical and creative production of mediated communication. They will learn basic production principles and use these to analyze and create audio, visual and digital content related to and derived from mass communication through a variety of in-class exercises and creative projects.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The course examines communication throughout history. It explores the relationship of communication media and technologies to society and culture. The course covers the history of different communication media, such as the printing press, telegraph, radio and television broadcasting, film and sound recording, and the Internet.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will introduce students to a variety of methods for collecting, analysing, and interpreting data for research in media studies. Students will explore tools and techniques that support inquiry into problems and questions of a digital era. Approaches will include content analysis, big data, interviews, ethnography, and decolonizing methods.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 3000A/B.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours and 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces basic concepts of political economy to the study of contemporary media. By examining corporate, public and alternative media formations, it provides students with the tools to analyze intersections of power and wealth in societies and economies increasingly centered on the profitable exploitation of culture and information.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces students to the concepts and debates surrounding the intersections of health and media/information. Topics may include the social determinants of health and the media; the interrelationship between pharmaceutical marketing and advertising; Indigenous health issues and media coverage; the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth; and global pandemics.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2165F if taken in 2016-17, 2017-18 or 2018-19 or the former MIT 2165G in 2018-19.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the role of media and visual culture in shaping our environment, worldviews, and senses of self and identity, including issues related to gender, sexuality, class, race and ethnicity, and ability and disability.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Examines the role of advertising, promotion and marketing in our culture, the relation of these practices to a 'consumer society', the connections between advertising and propaganda, the ways marketing may or may not be used for purposes other than profit, and how markets and marketing influence media.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the relationships between media, social movements, and social change. By exploring struggles over issues such as democracy, the environment, human rights, gender equality, class relations, and race and ethnic relations, we will map the ways that participants use media, and the obstacles they confront.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Popular culture is shaped by industrial complexes such as the major ¬ film studios and music labels, the videogames business, comic book publishing, and radio and television networks. This course examines such cultural industries, considering the role of audiences and fans, and the myths and realities of creative cultural work.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Investigates some of the controversies about, and skills of, journalism, studying both mainstream news services and citizen journalism, and providing an introduction to journalistic writing and news production, and the everyday practices of various types of news organizations.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, virtual worlds, online games, networked communities, new media and e-learning. It examines topics including on online identity, gender in cyberspace, videogame culture, Web 2.0, digital design, surveillance and privacy.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 2310A/B.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides an introduction to some of the legal aspects of media, including issues of copyright and intellectual property, access to information and privacy, slander and libel, and also discusses the ethical questions confronting media and information professionals.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Discover how access to and control of behind-the-scenes information is a major force in our lives. This course explores how search engines harvest "big" data from users and use it to map, analyze, and exploit patterns of online behaviour for marketing, government and corporate intelligence, and other purposes.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2376F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course is an introduction to the role played by communication and culture in international and transnational relations. Through the use of theories and examples, we examine a range of issues related to power relations, economic development and cultural change using readings and concepts from communication studies, international relations, sociology, and other disciplines.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the impact of popular music as a vital part of media culture with topics such as the music business, music and gender, digital music, popular music on television, and music celebrities.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2350F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course considers how media of all kinds handle high-stakes issues. By analyzing and writing about documentary, fiction, film, graphic texts etc., students will learn to trust their own voices. During and after a war there is a struggle to define what it is about: a war for the war.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 2161F if taken in 2015-2016, the former MIT 3440F if taken in 2017-2018, 2019-2020, 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The course explores traditions within media and cultural theory, including traditions such as cultural studies, semiotics, hermeneutics, poststructuralism and postmodernism. These traditions arise from debates around such issues as: audience/reader activity, diversity, context, texts and textual determination, ideology and hegemony, discourse, and socio-cultural constructions.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 2500A/B THE MEANING OF TECHNOLOGY: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
Exploration of a number of technologies that lie behind and fuel the technocultural imagination. Introduces contemporary technologies from both a technical and cultural/historical point of view. Topics include: technological systems, issues of technical visualization, representation and interactivity, natural vs. artificial languages, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural and virtual environments, technology as social imperative and cultural metaphor.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course emphasizes the development and manipulation of sound sources, especially music, within a mixed media context. Students will be introduced to music-specific technologies and concepts that can be applied to a multimedia environment. Previous music experience is not required, however students will acquire some musical skills and study certain musical concepts.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students will develop coding skills in HTML and CSS, while learning foundational architecture and user-experience principles. They will explore the cultural significance and theoretical implications of this medium, focusing on design and production of information for websites, which communicate through the integrated use of text, images, and other media.
Antirequisite(s): Computer Science 2033A/B, Digital Communication 2203A/B.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course introduces the student to the concepts of visual literacy. Study concentrates on the elements and principles of basic two dimensional designs, visual communication and its objective theoretical application. Current industry standard vector-based, bitmap-based and presentation software applications are introduced to allow the student to practice and exercise visual literacy.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 2204A/B.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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An introductory course in digital video production that will engage students in the production, history, and theories of moving images. Through the integration of lectures, screenings, and studio assignments, students will obtain the necessary critical and technical skills to produce short, creative digital video projects.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 2660A/B if taken in 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 or 2013-14.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The subject of a Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the third or fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Course Weight: 1.00
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The subject of a Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the third or fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course addresses a variety of issues pertaining to a public sphere for free and democratic flows of information. How do information circuits influence the production, organization, and dissemination of information, whether print, digital, electronic, audio or visual? How do such circuits configure public access, knowledge production, and cultural representations?
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Our world is fractured by inequalities in capacities involving the means of communication. This course examines such disparities using a political economy approach. It assesses the international interplay of power, wealth and information in the context transnational capitalism, nation-state relations, and an array of mediators (institutions, organizations, and technologies) shaping our emerging world (dis)order.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3130F/G THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFORMATION: NETWORKED CAPITALISM
The course digs beneath the hype about the "new economy" to examine the real dynamics of commodification that are emerging from the interaction between digital networks and high capitalism. Topics include dot.commercialization, virtual advertising, open/closed networks, Web content industries, portals and search engines, knowbots and market agents, and piracy.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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What economic conditions influence production inside the entertainment industries? How is digitalization changing the politics of entertainment production? What potential does digitalization hold for innovation and cultural diversity? How are Canadian businesses faring inside the global entertainment sector? These are among the key questions that this course aims to answer.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3437G if taken in 2009-10, the former MIT 3871F/G in 2010-11 or 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3133F/G NET-WORK: LABOUR AND PROFIT ON FACEBOOK, FLICKR, YOUTUBE AND WEB 2.0
This course will explore the impact that User-Generated Content, Social Networks & Immaterial Labour have had on Autonomist Marxist theory. The course will consider the changes taking place in the nature of the labour process, the products being produced by this shift to immaterial work, and the influence that this shift has had on Autonomist Marxism.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3771F if taken in 2009-10, 2010-11 or 2011-12, Digital Communication 3205F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course offers students the critical tools to explore how shifting modes of representation from oral songs and stories to information technology, effect our cultural conceptions of 'the outlaw' and of justice. The course incorporates a theory of the outlaw as an extraordinary criminal caught in a liminal threshold 'outside the law.'
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course investigates how human sexuality and sexual identity are represented through various media (film, advertising, television, print and electronic media). We will look at how media sources both reinforce and challenge dominant understandings of concepts commonly associated with sexuality, including masculinity and femininity, and heterosexuality and homosexuality.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2375F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the role of media in shaping our understanding of mental health and mental illness. Students will produce traditional, academic assignments as well as work aimed at nonacademic audiences.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3432F if taken in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 or 2018-19.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course turns a critical and analytical eye to public relations, recognizing the role PR practitioners play in creating, shaping and disseminating information. It offers practical strategies to deal with public relations claims and releases but also explores the ways such information affects a society not widely schooled in the techniques and goals of PR practitioners.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3857F/G if taken in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020 or 2020-2021.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines some of the issues that arise from our commercial – and often noncommercial – advertising activities. Topics include the psycho-social, economic, political and cultural impacts of advertising such as advertising’s effects on consumer markets, its influence on our purchase and life-style decisions, the possible perpetuation of stereotypes and other promises and perils pertaining to this industry.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides a critical survey of issues related to children's advertising, marketing, and consumer culture. The historic rise of children's marketing, the value advertisers place on children, and contemporary controversial debates will be investigated and located within broad theoretical, cultural, social, and institutional contexts.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3402F if taken in 2009-10 or 2010-11, the former MIT 3404F if taken in Intersession in 2010, or the former MIT 3402G in 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course considers the television industry's address to women viewers, focusing on the multichannel transition and the post-network period. We will consider the roles played by genre, character and content in making "women's television", and will pay particular attention to the medium's ongoing dialogue with feminism.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3435F if taken in 2010-11 or 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will apply a variety of feminist theories to investigate the construction of gender by a range of historical and contemporary media - newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film, the Internet and advertising.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Why do we celebrate stars? What can the analysis of celebrity reveal about modern ideas of self and individual identity? This course introduces critical work on the phenomenon of stardom, develops case studies of individual film, television, and popular music stars, and investigates the institutional and industrial processes that have created celebrities.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course interrogates media images of masculinity ca. 1946-76. It will examine the long-lasting social and cultural consequences of the remarkable shifts in the construction and representation of Western masculinity which took place between the end of the Second World War and the rise of the Counterculture. The course focuses on gender, power, and culture.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The class will examine the idea of audience as it is conceptualized in communication theory and research. The course will focus on theoretical readings and debates about the nature and definition of the audience, and look at the function of the audience for the media industry and for culture.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3215F/G KILLER CULTURE: WAR AND THE MEDIATION OF REALITY IN THE 20TH-21ST CENTURIES
War is the machine that created many of the technologies that we depend on in this century. This course considers the ways in which we sift war through media filters, the stories we tell ourselves (and the way we mediate those stories) about gender and power, truth and myth, the body and spirit, the technosphere and biosphere. Using a wide variety of media products, the course will examine the mediation of high-tech information systems, global armament, and the mechanization of death.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the historical development and social significance of the contemporary culture of consumption. After exploring its history and dynamics, among other subjects, it looks at advertising and marketing, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) applications, globalization, and strategies of resistance.
Prerequisite(s): MEDIACOM 2100F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The formation of public opinion and its role in democratic society. Theories of attitude and opinion formation and persuasion. Study of propaganda. Current issues in public opinion and the "manufacture of consent."
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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From Trinity to Postmodernity, from the culture of containment to the contamination of culture, this course explores not only the history of America after WWII, but also the impact of the Atom Bomb, the Cold War, and their continuing influence on the formation of American ideology and identity. Using the twin themes of confinement and resistance, the course will focus primarily on media such as literature and film, but will also consider representative examples from journalism, the visual arts, and architecture.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines various forms of media convergence (industrial, regulatory, technological, and cultural) and how interaction between television and digital media can alter sociocultural understandings of mass media industries and technologies. In addition, it examines the evolution of a formerly passive audience into active 'produsers' and investigates the democratizing potential of interactive and user-generated media.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3404F if taken in 2009-10, 2010-11 or 2011-12.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course considers factors crucial to successful functioning of human communities. It reviews problems identified during earlier study in order to propose solutions, whether ideals, dreams, or probabilities supported by information, ecological, technological, and media theories, applying landmark texts to the worlds of present and future.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 4100F/G if taken in 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23; the former MIT 3405F/G if taken in 2023-2024.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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What is history if not a reconstructed image of the past? This course examines the ways in which photography has shaped our idea of history; how specific photographs ground history by turning the world into a picture. The political significance of this transformation will be examined through specific visual case studies.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Traces the development of the idea of "entertainment" in commercial radio and television, and situates the institutions of broadcast entertainment within wider debates around leisure, popular taste and culture. Theoretical and historical approaches to radio and television will be introduced.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines representations of Hollywood in film, television, and print. From Day of the Locust (1939) to Tropic Thunder (2008), we explore Hollywood as a model for what constitutes the "real" in contemporary culture, and how these representations inform the American political landscape and constructions of sexuality, desire, and identity.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Our reliance on private transport has produced a landscape dominated by the automobile: an environment to which we are culturally blind. This course is not a strict history of the car. It is a sustained examination of how a particular technology can become intertwined with a society's political and economic processes.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course aims to ground students in the historical development in the methods of how propaganda and persuasion have been utilized in print and visual culture, spanning Greco-Roman art and rhetoric, contemporary use of diverse media, and how new techniques were developed alongside new forms of media technology (such as blogging).
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Internet memes are more than just cute pictures of cats with silly captions – they're arguably one of the most important ways we communicate with each other online. This course explores the history and development of internet memes and critically examines their meaning and impact in modern society.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3652G if taken in 2014-2015 or the former MIT 3652F if taken in 2019- 2020, 2020-2021.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3282F/G COMIC BOOK CULTURE: FROM PULP FICTION TO POST MODERN LEGITIMACY
This course will run along three parallel tracks: it will examine the history of comic books and how they engaged such political issues as World War II and the cultural revolution of the 1960s; it will show how comics have crossed over into other popular media, mainly film; and it will look at comic books as a serious aesthetic medium, trying to understand them as a form of sequential art.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the emergence and consolidation of modern advertising from the 1880s until the 1980s. It examines the development and growth of ad agencies, advertising practices, and commercial media, with a focus on iconic ad campaigns. The course deals with advertising’s impact on popular culture, as seen in novels, film, and television. It also probes how governments, politicians, and other social actors used advertising to re-configure 20th century public life.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3403G if taken in 2011-12, 2012-2013, 2014-2015 or 2015-2016, the former MIT 3403F in 2012-2013, 2014-2015 or 2016-2017.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This class takes artists as working people and examines the production of commercial popular music as a set of work processes, focusing on legal, discursive, technological, and economic contexts. We explore the relations of performers—especially recording artists—to their work, their personae, their audiences, and their intellectual property.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3439F if taken in 2014-15, the former MIT 3439G in 2015-16 or 2016-17.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Liz Phair's 1993 recording Exile in Guyville was upfront in acknowledging what female and male fans of popular music, especially rock'n'roll know but don't necessarily want to admit: rock'n'roll is a "guy thing." But is it? This course explores meanings, constructions and representations of gender in popular music of the 20th and 21st centuries, including but not limited to rock'n'roll. The course is taught from a media studies perspective, so no formal musical knowledge is expected.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will explore how music videos have served as a space for the interaction between art and advertising. It will investigate the music video's cultural, sexual, and ideological influences on a generation of television viewers who have been molded into an ideal demographic for the consumption of both media and consumer goods.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3651F/G if taken in 2010-11, 2011-2012, 2012-2013 or 2013-2014.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course uses feminist theoretical perspectives to explore the following topics: virtual feminist communities and cyberspaces; representation of women in education, media and information professions; the uses of the Internet for networking, feminist activism and community development; teleworking and female entrepreneurship; training for information technologies; issues of demography and diversity.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Media and Communication Studies 3371F/G FROM ARCADES TO ESPORTS: VIDEO GAME CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INDUSTRY
Video and computer games have, over the last thirty years, revolutionized popular culture, digital technology and the entertainment industry. At the same time they have provoked intense controversy over issues from game addiction to virtual violence to digital gender. This course gives an overview of the history of interactive gaming, its economic dynamics, the social formations it is catalyzing and the new theories of aesthetics, simulation and play it has generated.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 3206F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides hands-on experience with building, evaluating, and using social media tools such as blogs, wikis, and social networking websites within an organizational context. Relevant issues such as user privacy, social media policies, effective planning and implementation, and organizational impact will be addressed.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3852G if taken in 2011-2012, Digital Communication 3209F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Social networking has as long history as human civilization itself. In today's online environment, Twitter and Facebook have altered the social landscape. Students will explore the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of social networking, and study its contexts and social issues such as bullying, anonymity, addiction, anxiety, and narcissism.
Antirequisite(s): The former MIT 2374F/G, Digital Communication 2200F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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An exploration of the importance of electronic communications and learning technologies to society, politics and culture. Topics include: theories relating communications to social organization; political economy of information and media; power, privacy, equity, access, gender, emergent cultures/ identity in cyberspace; changing knowledge and learning in an age of convergent communications.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines how relations between humans and technology create different kinds of cultures or "technocultures” and looks at early text-based technologies as well as image-based social media platforms and robotics/AI. Students will acquire cutting-edge knowledge of new trends and phenomena linked to social embedded in technosocial spaces.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Can the law protect artist and audience? Better yet, what are we trying to protect? We will use this perspective to consider legal liability the following contexts: incitement in lyrics, lyrics used as evidence in a criminal case, liability for copyright infringement; invasion of privacy; defamation; and even censorship.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3431B if taken in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, the former MIT 3431A if taken in 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 1-3 hour screening, 2 lecture/seminar hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 1-3 hour screening, 2 lecture/seminar hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 1-3 hour screening, 2 lecture/seminar hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Without media policy, your smartphone would be just a pricey paperweight. This course provides an introduction to media and information technology policies, primarily in Canada and the U.S. It includes training in understanding legal documents and procedures, and provides tools for exercising power and influence in the media and beyond.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3441F if taken in 2019-2020, 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This introductory course explores audio as a media platform. Students acquire skills in recording, editing, and mixing audio talk content. Using journalistic principles, they will learn about storytelling, interviewing, and content structure, and will apply these skills to produce an audio story and pitch and create an original podcast.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will introduce students to the practice and principles of mobile journalism. Students will learn the basics of journalistic storytelling, including what a story is, how to learn to plan, research, shoot, write, voice, edit and share video stories using smartphones and free or low cost apps.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3470A if taken in 2017-18, 2018-2019, the former MIT 3470B if taken in 2019-2020 or 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the ideas, methods and politics of making—from hobby, craft, repair and DIY cultures, to the more entrepreneurial ‘makerspaces’ and ‘fab labs’ promoted by education and business. This hands-on, collaborative course explores making, breaking and taking apart through in-class projects and individual final projects.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3430B if taken in 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-21.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This introductory course directly and productively engages with the photographic situation, grounded in its history and its social and aesthetic practice. Exploring notions of reality and representation, history and politics through photographic practice and experimentation, students will investigate technical and aesthetic approaches to photography as medium, message, and technology.
Antirequisite(s): Studio Art 2652B; the former MIT 3665B if taken in 2016-17, 2018-19, the former MIT 3663B if taken in 2022-23.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in Year 3 or Year 4 of a FIMS module.
Extra Information: 3 hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course teaches students to write and interpret more complex pieces of journalism from a variety of sources. Students will study different styles of feature writing, from the point of view of both a consumer of news and a journalist. Students will also pitch story ideas and practice turning their ideas into engaging features.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3870G if taken in 2009-10, 2010-11 or 2011-12 or Writing 2203F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Explores the relationship between media, documentary, and representation. Using cultural and media theory, we will explore 'documentary' practice in cinema, performance, photography, the museum, oral history, print, and digital media. Students apply critical readings to produce and critique one (or two) small documentary projects. No production experience expected.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 laboratory hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course aims to give students an overview of the types of stories written by an arts journalist working for a newspaper or website, such as reviews, columns, features, and profiles. The course will consider solutions to problems specific to arts journalism and will examine ethical questions peculiar to arts journalism.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The purpose of this class is for students to become proficient at writing opinion pieces, for example columns. The web is an opinion medium – readers go online seeking informed commentary on the issues of the day, so we will explore the difference between mere ranting and a reasoned argument.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3856G if taken in 2015-16, 2016-2017, 2017-18 or 2018-19.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Activists often consider corporate or state owned media unfriendly terrain. But such media can provide a crucial way to 'get the message out'. Using the ideas of experienced media activists, and examples from the practice of today's social movements, this course investigates how to win the battle for public opinion in mainstream media.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the definition, history, theory and practice of 'alternative' media, and its differences from and relationship to 'mainstream' corporate and state supported media. These issues are explored across a variety of media to critically assess the possibilities and limits of alternative media in enriching cultural diversity and democratic practice.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores how activists use digital technologies to organize, protest, evade surveillance, and share information. It considers what contemporary digital activism reveals about democracy and how it functions, the media, citizenship, and technological potentials and limitations. Students will engage with content in a variety of formats and project-based work.
Antirequisite(s): Digital Communication 2305F/G if taken in 2022-23 or the former MIT 3954F/G if taken in 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines the history and representation of genocide and state violence, including media coverage, truth and reconciliation processes, the politics of commemoration, and atrocity prevention. Case studies include the Canadian residential school system, the Holocaust, the Salvadoran Civil War, and the Rwandan Genocide.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course explores the relation between food, media, and social justice. You will learn about corporate/industrial and alternative models of food production, and then you will use your critical and creative skills to respond to what you've learned. Themes include genetic modification, factory farming, body image, animal welfare, technology and ethics, globalization, and alternative or grassroots responses.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 2 hour film screening.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course will explore the history of student activism from the medieval period to the present, with a specific focus on the past 100 years in Europe and North America. We will look at the roots of student organization and dissent in the university itself, and will exam impact of student agitation and resistance on broader movements for social change, such as anti-war, civil rights and labor movements. We will examine strategies and tactics of student movements, and debate the usefulness of student resistance in furthering the public interest.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course provides students with the critical tools needed to understand the use of media and its impact on the recognition and restitution of human rights claims. We examine various visual practices (documentation, archiving, witnessing, advocacy, and surveillance) and a range of visual imagery (video, photography, drawings, and monuments).
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3772F/G if taken in 2016-17, 2017-18, 2021-22, 2022-23.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Recently, popular discourse on the digital revolution, and its facilitation of a colour-blind future, has been undermined by more sensible debates over the connections between race and technology. This course will not only explore those connections, but investigate issues related to socio-economic and racial exploitation under contemporary capitalism.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course examines journalism and the local conditions that enable progressive social change, as well as those that constrain it. Case studies from the Middle East, China and Africa may be reviewed. Students will also gain an understanding of the role media plays in the process of globalization.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3437F/G if taken in 2010-11, 2011-2012, 2012-2013 or 2013-2014.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course is about social ecology and settler-colonialism from the early-modern period to the present, and will unpack the history of imperialism in the Americas and the stories used to legitimate it. Topics include primitive accumulation, eco-socialism, and armed struggle.
Antirequisite(s): the former MIT 3952G if taken in 2020-2021.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission identifies the media as intrinsic to Indigenous reconciliation, the media remains a site through which the legacy of settler colonialism circulates, perpetuating damaging representations and restricting access to alternative narratives. This course explores the systemic effects of this legacy and identifies potential medial solutions.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students will, in consultation with a full-time faculty member in FIMS who has agreed to act as supervisor, develop an appropriate plan of study, do the research and complete the writing of a 50-page paper, or equivalent, that connects work done in the field during the completion of the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G, with ideas or themes critical to Media and the Public Interest. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 3951F/G.
Prerequisite(s): The student must find a full-time FIMS faculty member willing to supervise.
Corequisite(s): the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G.
Course Weight: 1.00
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Students will, in consultation with a full-time faculty member in FIMS who has agreed to act as supervisor, develop an appropriate plan of study, do the research and complete the writing of a 50-page paper, or equivalent, that connects work done in the field during the completion of the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G, with ideas or themes critical to Media and the Public Interest. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Antirequisite(s): MEDIACOM 3950E.
Prerequisite(s): The student must find a full-time FIMS faculty member willing to supervise.
Corequisite(s): the former MIT 3990F/G and/or the former MIT 3991F/G.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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The subject of an Advanced Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program and permission of the Faculty.
Course Weight: 1.00
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The subject of an Advanced Directed Readings course will be selected by a student in consultation with a full-time faculty member willing to direct the course. Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program is required. Permission of the Faculty is required.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in the fourth year of an MIT program and permission of the Faculty.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Students may be required to do in-depth projects and/or seminar presentations in the senior Special Topics courses.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in fourth year of an Honours Specialization module in FIMS. Note: Enrolment is based on a ballot system which is submitted prior to course registration.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Course Weight: 0.50
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This course combines work in the field of public interest media, participation in a special seminar and theoretically informed paper or project based on the practicum experience.
Prerequisite(s): Restricted to students in the fourth year of a module in Media and the Public Interest
Extra Information: A maximum of 15 hours of class time and a minimum of 40 hours placement. The MPI Practicum will be evaluated on a Pass/Fail basis with the option of a Pass with Distinction.