Time Schedule:
Kirsten A Foot
COM 300
Seattle Campus
Provides a comprehensive examination of the effects of new, digital media on interpersonal communication, media industries, and media culture. Emphasis on economic, social, political, and aesthetic implications. Provides limited experience with computer-based media. No prior technical computer experience assumed.
Class description
This course covers an array of new media-related topics, including the history of the Internet, how new media devices and infrastructure work, the kinds of factors that affect where and to what extent new media are employed around the world, reasons why some people choose to limit or "opt out" of new media, and current challenges in how new media are manufactured and used. Key concepts addressed (and problematized) in the course include the ubiquity, constancy, and generative legacy and future potential of new media, and how trust, expertise, and sociocultural values intertwine with the ways that new media are configured and employed. The course readings and assignments are designed to enable you to reflect on and evaluate your experience of new media, and to analyze how new media has developed to date and ways it could be shaped differently in the future.
Student learning goals
One objective of the course is to help you build a working knowledge of what digital, networked media have in common with and distinction from earlier media.
A second objective is to increase your understanding of both the material and virtual dimensions of new media in social, political, economic, and environmental contexts.
The third objective is to equip you to discern how to act constructively in relation to new media, whether as a user and/or a producer.
General method of instruction
Interactive lectures and discussion/lab sections.
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
Reflection papers on assigned readings, participatory exercises & corresponding reports, discussion participation, and 3 quizzes.
