Introduces students to the documentary, a popular video and audio genre which both entertains and educates. Students will learn how to analyse various sub-genres to understand how and why they are produced and interpreted. Course credit exclusion: AP/COMN 3330 3.00 (prior to Fall 2012).
What is the relationship between the changing forms of state and corporate power and civil society resistance associated with new media? The role of new media in protest movements (e.g., Occupy), transparency platforms (e.g., Wikipedia), and hactivism (e.g., Anonymous) is explored, along with how states and corporations limit communication rights and use new media to […]
This course familiarizes students with debates about and theories used in the analysis of labour in the "information society." Labour and "social" media, open source software, media piracy, and other contemporary internet phenomena are all areas that are analysed with respect to their role in the reproduction of capital and attendant forms of exploitation, domination, […]
The course approaches advertising as a privileged form of communication and as central to development of the media. This course will explore the emergence of consumer society and the social, political, and economic roles of advertising within this development with particular focus on how the promotional discourses of advertising have become entrenched in our culture. […]
This course explores the relationship between the production and performance of music and its economic, social and political milieux. The first part of the course centres on the special theoretical perspective of the social sciences and the understanding it gives of the structure and content of music. The second part focuses on music in the […]
Class addresses media for, by, and about young people, looking at a wide range of contemporary media and focusing on the complex interplay between children's and youth media culture, and the concurrent rise of transmedia intertextuality and commercialization. Aims to allow space for students to reflect on social, historical and political contexts of their own […]
Examines processes and practices at work in media representations of race, sexuality, gender, class, ethnicity and nation within Western society. Key theoretical approaches to power, knowledge, ideology, subjectivity and signification are applied to current and historical representations of social identities. Course credit exclusion: AP/COMN 4325 6.00 (prior to Fall 2012).
The course analyzes themes in three areas: social movements; social justice as currently articulated by social movements; and communication and organization strategies used by movements. The course introduces themes related to organizational communication in the social movement context, specifically in a communications-dedicated class; it also gives students the tools to apply communications theories to the […]
This course analyzes labour in the communication and cultural industries (including journalism, broadcasting, creative labour and cyber-work) by the examination of the historical constitution, present institutions, and current practices organizing labour in these industries. Course credit exclusion: AP/COMN 3313 3.00 (prior to Fall 2012).
This course focuses on the presence of indigenous media in Canada today, as well as on emergent forms of Indigenous media and emergent Indigenous media theoretical and policy frameworks.