Communication

Utilizing the modern tools of photography, this course focuses on developing students' photographic skills and techniques for effective presentation of photographic essays. It also discusses major milestones of photography and photojournalism throughout history as well as current photo shoot trends. Photo assignments in the field, visits to photojournalism exhibitions, hands-on use of photo editing software, and lectures enhanced with audiovisuals are part of this course.

This course addresses key developments in contemporary digital culture. It focuses on how still and moving images, and art and visual culture in general change with the triumph of big data analytics and artificial intelligence. The course is structured around concepts key to such developments, such as the user and viewer, body and affect, (social) platform and metrics, interface and interaction, city and infrastructure, ecology and nature. 
 

This course focuses on the process of globalization, including global markets, international corporations, digital communications, and media convergence, which has created a new ecosystem for marketing, advertising, and branding. It also discusses popular culture and its influence on these areas as well as a cohesive idea of collective or generation imaginaries. This course offers a study of this influence by examining the representation and construction of different brands and cultural ideas in the new Spanish context through case studies of both local and global brands.

This course focuses on international public relations as a form of strategic communication to create and maintain beneficial connections between an organization (corporation, NGO, or government agency) and its audience in other countries. It explores the functions of international public relations and the techniques used to achieve strategic goals based on the objectives and needs of each case. This courses analyzes the conceptual factors of an organization's environment in different countries that impact public relations activities.

This course introduces students to the distinct communication activities related to social marketing, including the practice of achieving societal change for the benefit of the greater social good through the integration of commercially inspired skills and tools with other approaches. Sustainability, diversity, health, and community development have all become global societal concerns. Social marketing communication is therefore a much-needed individual and organizational proficiency for popularizing these concerns in a credible manner and for inferring voluntary behavioral changes among specific target audiences. The course provides relevant theoretical insights within social marketing communication, cause-related marketing communication, and commercial marketing communication. It also develops expertise in employing analytical tools belonging to narrative and discourse studies for working with and developing social marketing communication materials across various media.

This course examines major issues related to new topics in Spanish media. It is divided into two parts. Part one focuses on the representation of Spain through both traditional and new media. The second part explores how fiction, whether on television, cinema, or social media, is capable of describing in detail the reality of Spain.

This course examines qualitative communication research, the role it plays in the development of communication theories and applications, and the steps in carrying out qualitative research projects. It covers fundamental concepts in qualitative research design, sampling strategies and protocol development, data collection, data analysis, and evaluation. This course introduces basic concepts of qualitative methods such as interpretation, meaning making, co‐construction, and performance. A set of field‐based experiences are designed to give students opportunities to become familiar with specific forms of qualitative data gathering such as in‐depth interviews, focus groups, and ethnography.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course analyzes the connections between artistic practices and political issues in relation with the development and expansion of digital technologies. The course gives a historical-political perspective on the evolution of digitization from the birth of the internet to platform capitalism through a visual approach drawing on the main artistic movements that reflected on new technologies. The course is articulated into three parts. First, the course frames a political genealogy of the digital technologies, highlighting the philosophical issues they pose. For this reason, a brief history of the evolution of internet until the burst of platform capitalism is presented. Then, the course focuses on some of the main cultural paradigms about the technological innovation (Californian ideology, Transhumanism, Accelerationism, etc…) to analyze the way they frame the relationship between the digital and the human. Finally, the course explores how artists embedded and renewed such paradigms in their practices and how art changed thanks to the introduction of digital tools (artificial intelligence, NFT, etc.)

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.