Communication

This course reviews organizations and workplaces with a focus on how to enhance relationships with the organizations. Organization Theory is a branch of social sciences that is particularly interested in the why, how, and when multiple individuals join efforts to reach a common goal. It is a multidisciplinary subject drawing from disciplines such as arts and humanities, educational sciences, psychology, evolutionary biology, economics, and politics. These multiple lenses through which we view organizations make Organization Theory a fascinating and relevant topic to explore and examine at any stage of your study program. The main topics covered in this course are organization-environment relations, organizational design types and culture, leadership development, HRM and well-being, and managing diversity and inclusion at work.

The course discusses the role of cultural policy in the age of platform giants and how the digital media ecology of major platforms creates inter-dependencies with other platforms, established cultural institutions, legacy media, public service institutions, digital creators, and users. The course begins with a discussion on the platform society and how the notion of digital cultural politics relates to cultural, media, and communication policy, as well as the internet and cultural industries. It lays the foundations from the perspective of dominant platforms and platform providers, with a specific focus on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, and YouTube. The second part of the course looks at the inter-dependencies that these platforms generate between themselves and cultural institutions, analyzing cultural institution’s use of platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The third part of the course focuses on data politics, user rights ethics, and discrimination. The final part of the course is composed of a day-long workshop where students work on themes and topics of their own choice as part of their final project. This course is taken in conjunction with the course Cultural Policy – Theory, Method & Analysis (HMKK03611U), a compulsory but non-credit-bearing course that provides students with adequate tools to conduct research within the field of cultural policy, with an emphasis on the relationship between theoretical framework, methodological design, and analysis. 

This course focuses on the analysis of various media texts, historical developments within media, and their social and cultural contexts in the English-speaking world. It provides a foundation for understanding film, television, and digital media, and their relation to representation, culture, technology, and aesthetics. The course introduces media such as photography, feature films, avant-garde cinema, documentary films, television, digital media, print, and social media; and covers the concepts, methods, and various cultural theories within film and media. Formal and stylistics elements of film such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing, as well as approaches to understanding narrative and genre, are also covered. Students examine media products as a part of their social and cultural contexts and work collaboratively on the creation of a multimedia product.