Communication

This course examines the transformations of the media in China in the past three decades due to forces of marketization, political reform, technological changes, and cultural globalization. The course provides a basic and comprehensive understanding of contemporary Chinese media institutions, and how media and culture are embedded in a broader historical and global context. Popular culture in media is studied through its relation with cultural globalization, social stratification, and political economy. Guest lecturers from journalism, communication, and cultural studies speak on specific topics. Text: S.L. Shirk, ed., CHANGING MEDIA, CHANGING CHINA. Assessment: essay, final group project and presentation, tutorial participation.

This course is a study of international journalism, beginning with a review of the background of global journalism and its theoretical framework. Particular emphasis is paid to the rapidly changing landscape of journalism in the digital era. Topics of study include: war and conflict journalism; correspondents, envoys, and legal coverage; censorship, propaganda, and the ethical response; Al Qaeda and cyberterrorism; coverage of climate change, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, volcanoes, and accidents; news from international organizations; leading think tanks and their analysis; elections, regime change, and international politics; social networks and the WikiLeaks case; and regional geopolitical coverage.

This course examines the cultural production of the 1960s in the United States, a period of enormous socio-cultural and political change. Topics include: New Journalism; the Civil Rights Movement; politicization of rock and roll; student protests; the Summer of Love; Vietnam; rioting in Chicago 1968; Hunter Thompson and the Hell's Angels; Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Drawing on studies in psychology, management, and communication, this course covers a variety of topics (e.g., identity, motivation, and interpersonal relationships) from a cross-cultural perspective. The first half of the course starts with an introduction to culture and cross-cultural communication and proceeds to mapping world cultures along the dimensions of value systems as well as how such systems affect individuals in terms of development and communication. The second half of the course applies knowledge to different settings and elaborates on how the differences impact conflict management and relational maintenance in various contexts, such as tourism, business, education, and health care.  
 

This course studies how theories of social psychology can be applied to the understanding of how new media is produced, marketed, resisted, adopted, and consumed. It highlights key stages in the development trajectory of new media and introduces relevant theories, while considering such issues as why some technologies succeed where others fail, how marketers should promote new technology, which services are likely to become tomorrow's dominant applications, what goes through the minds of new media adopters, and who are most likely to engage in deviant media use.