Communication

This course examines the tremendous impact of social media on many walks of life, with a special emphasis on how social media have been transforming the profession of journalist and how the public now consumes news and information. It also offers a look beyond the field of journalism to consider how social media and online communities are profoundly affecting the ways in which young people form their identities and then how those identities develop later in life. Special sessions tackle the influence of social media on the construction of identity, and on the relationship and community building. Many of these issues are discussed in the context of Central and Eastern Europe and the Western experience of social media is compared to the situation in the post-communist world. The course addresses many questions related to social media, including the definition of social media; the role of social media in the formation of community; the role of social media as a uniting or dividing factor; the differences in the consumption of social media in Central and Eastern Europe; the role of social media technologies in constructions of youth, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality; the effect of social media improving on the state of journalism; changes in the role of the journalist with the advance of social media; and others.

This course explores the dynamic and complex intersection of media, culture and the city in global metropolises. The course provides students with a comprehensive introduction to key theoretical issues on digital screen, media, spectacle, urban experience, popular culture, and globalization in global cities. It also critically discusses methodological issues on the analytical framework and knowledge-forms in media and cultural research for local contexts. Students are encouraged to engage with current debates on epistemological and methodological questions in the fields of media and communication studies as well as urban and visual cultural studies and to enrich their knowledge of urban culture and politics in a systematic way. In doing so, the course helps students to grasp the complexity of media culture and to analyze creatively and critically a broad range of media products and cultural materials.

The course analyzes the complex relationship between media and gender, focusing on gender equality, women’s rights, and unbiased gender views. It draws on the theories, topics, and qualitative methods of western feminist critical communication research, revealing that the global media organization and power system rely on the operation of political economy and ideology, and construct the relationship between audience goods and class, gender, race and science and technology to create surplus value.

This course examines topics in advertising. It studies basic modern concepts/ideas, theoretical models, empirical instruments and data sources in advertising and introduces the place of advertising in business, branding, and society. The course helps students to understand and be able to apply principles for aesthetic, rhetorical, ethical, and cultural critique of advertising products and practices.

The course is for students who wish to improve their oral presentation skills and gain insight into the basics of research communication. It introduces students to the key characteristics of oral communication, academic argumentation and knowledge criteria, and rhetorical strategies for successful oral presentations such as the classic means of persuasion, disposition, information strategies, and nonverbal delivery.

The course discusses the various expressions of popular culture within 20th-century art and media. Collaboration between different media is emphasized. The main focus is on contemporary western culture, the latter years of the 20th century, and the expressions of postmodern culture, although several episodes in the cultural history of the whole century are studied historically. Advertising, television, music videos, movies, literature, and music are analyzed. Theoretical tools are introduced from the foundations of intermedia studies, cultural sociology, hermeneutics, and semiotics. Several examples are presented for analysis and discussion. Students identify basic concepts, ideas, and terminology in intermedia studies, and describe popular cultural conditions that account for some of the processes that shaped the postmodern art of the 1900s and its relationship to popular culture.