Time Schedule:
Madhavi Mohan Murty
BIS 313
Bothell Campus
Examines a variety of issues involved in understanding different forms of media and their impact on our lives, in contexts spanning from local to global, using a wide range of theoretical, disciplinary, and methodological approaches.
Class description
Spring 2011
We learn about the world around us through an engagement with the news media and we laugh, cry and sing along with the entertainment media that surrounds us. However, we are also entertained by the news media and learn about important socio-political issues through the entertainment media. Acknowledging the critique made by scholars and commentators about the news media in particular becoming more like entertainment but also moving beyond it, this class is interested in working out the methodological and analytical tools that could be used to think critically about the synergies that exist between journalism and entertainment media.
Why do these synergies occur? What can they tell us about our engagement with the political, the economic and the social? What do they tell us about media as an industry and as a practice? How do we engage with these synergies as media consumers, practitioners and scholars?
Student learning goals
Defining, analyzing and discussing ways in which to think about the synergies between entertainment and news media.
Defining and understanding analytical concepts such as "ideology," "discourse" and "story."
Examining both the news and the entertainment media's accounts of topical issues under the broad categories of race, gender, class and religion.
Creating an archive of materials that will include news and entertainment media around a significant political issue.
Building the tools to critically analyze an archive that includes both news and entertainment media.
General method of instruction
Lectures, analytical and empirical reading, discussions, student-led discussions, presentations, writing.
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
