Communication

Through this course, students gain access to research-led lectures and the latest scholarship to properly understand how digital platforms work and the roles they play in society. Students apply this knowledge to case studies to understand how platforms are shaped and where citizens might intervene in their governance. Students engage in debates to think about how to critically engage with technological power and to mitigate the social harms of platforms.

What is good reasoning? The course answers this question by studying the mechanics of reasoning. Students learn what an argument is, what the difference between validity and soundness is, and what it means to say that an argument is valid in virtue of its form. Students are introduced to various strategies and pitfalls in reasoning. In addition, to hone analytical skills, students are given arguments—drawn from philosophy and other areas—to unpack and evaluate. 

With globalization, the Internet, and the general shrinking of time and space, cross- cultural interaction has become a necessity in people’s everyday lives. This course is designed to interrogate different aspects of cross-cultural communication and cultural differences: family life, social relationships, the workplace, government, education, gender, romance, and religion. Throughout exploring these topics, we will strive to engage in personal self-reflection, hands-on experience, and to understand the connections to larger social structures.

The course explores how frameworks, theories, and models from a number of different areas, including cognitive neuropsychology and psycholinguistics, inform clinical assessment and remediation of aphasia. Findings from basic science, neurophysiology, imaging, and speech and language therapy are linked to increase our knowledge of the effects of the rehabilitative interventions at the level of the brain as well as their functional impact. Both emerging and established rehabilitative approaches are highlighted.

This course introduces the major theories and research methods of interpersonal communication and explains how they can be applied to effective communication in a variety of specific interpersonal relationships. Topics discussed include privacy and communication, nonverbal interpersonal communication, computer-mediated interpersonal communication, and social networks. The program is designed to incorporate cutting-edge academic and industry developments and to foster an international perspective.

The analysis of communication on social media is rapidly becoming a key-area in (socio)linguistics and discourse studies. This course introduces students to the main methods of data collection and analysis of language and discourse for a variety of social media contexts. The course combines familiarization with frameworks of analysis with practical steps on how to approach data. A variety of case-studies of social media afforded practices (e.g. sharing, tagging, Like & Follow) ranging from YouTube to Facebook and Twitter illustrate the role of a range of language and multimodal resources in presenting ourselves and relating with others online. 

This course explores key concepts and theories in media, communication, and cultural studies to connect them to matters of cultural politics and power. It focuses on language and how it is used to represent the world we live in. The course covers semiotics, discourse, power/knowledge, speech act theory, performativity, and queer theory. Using these theoretical/methodological perspectives, it critically examines media representations of gender, sexuality, race, and nation.  

This course focuses on how photojournalism contributes to the news landscape and how images shape our comprehension of current affairs and history. It looks at images from contemporary events as well as studying the history of photojournalism and its different fields of engagement to provide context for its role today. The course also focuses on how artificial intelligence is changing the game for the viewers as well as professional photographers.

This course examines the forms, channels, and strategies behind the distribution of propaganda. It reviews the history of propaganda from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, the invention of mechanized printing, and to the modern state. Particular emphasis is placed on propaganda in modern wartime. 

This interdisciplinary course provides students with the opportunity to address complex problems identified by industry, community, and government organizations, and gain valuable experience in working across disciplinary boundaries. In collaboration with a
major industry partner and an academic lead, students integrate their academic skills and knowledge by working in teams with students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. This experience allows students to research, analyze and present solutions to a real-world problem, and to build on their interpersonal and transferable skills by engaging with and learning from industry experts and presenting their ideas and solutions to the industry partner.