Courses

Contemporary theories and major lines of classic and current research concerning interpersonal communication.

Survey of major principles and research organizational communication information processing. Analysis of the functions, transmission, and retention of information in the development and maintenance of organizations.

Provides an overview of the major areas of health communication including health communication campaigns, physician-patient communication, and communication among health professionals and individuals affected by health issues.

This doctoral seminar is a core requirement for the Communication area of the CILS PhD. This course provides a basic overview of social science research methods. The emphasis of the course is on appropriate method selection and the strengths and weakness of different approaches. The course covers a range of quantitative and qualitative methods.

This doctoral seminar is a core requirement for the Communication area of the CILS PhD. The course exposes students to many of the core theoretical foundations that underlie the field of communication and explores the principals underlying theory construction and theoretical model building within the discipline.

This course aims to provide deeper insight into the contested phenomenon of globalization and its implications for organizations and processes of organizing. Students taking this course will gain awareness of the complexities of organizing across national and other boundaries and the role of communication in this process, as well as assessing the implications of globalization for today’s organizations, including both corporations and non-profits, governmental and private.

Theory, concepts, methods, and analysis for understanding and applying social networks to organizational contexts.

This class examines key challenges, opportunities, and policies at the intersection of communication technology use and the workplace.

Provides a theoretical orientation to the examination of social media. Topics discussed include issues of self-presentation, identity, privacy, youth and social media, information exchange, political participation, social networks, social capital, virtual worlds, collective action and work.

Leadership is a topic of substantial current interest in corporate, political, academic, health and community settings. This seminar will examine organizational leadership concepts and practices across a variety of these contexts from both a scholarly and professional perspective. The course will include readings on and discussion of the scholarly and professional literature on leadership, individual and group projects, and experiential learning activities such as case studies and simulations.

Current mass communication theories and approaches analyzed from a research perspective. Topics include: critical theory; audience ethnography, uses and gratifications; socialization processes and effects; and agenda setting.

A study of the processes through which scholarly, scientific, and technical ideas are communicated: mentoring; professional, national, and international networks; scholarly and scientific publishing; and other aspects of specialized information transfer.

Examines newly emerging mediated communication technologies (e.g., mobile phones and internet) affect social relationships and organizations; also, how social forces affect adoption and usage patterns of mediated technologies.

Students engage in a theoretical examination of experiential media (e.g., augmented reality, virtual reality). Readings provide a perspective on the development of experiential media, including implications for the transformation of media content forms and platforms in an experiential context. Students consider methodological and critical approaches to studying experiential media.

Upon successful completion of the course, students will:

•    Understand and engage with media theory and empirical research relevant to understanding the emerging domain of experiential media.
•    Analyze the implications of experiential media for journalism, media organizations, and society, by drawing on theory, published research, case studies, and real-world examples.
•    Contribute to knowledge of experiential media through your own original research.
•    Develop research presentation skills.

This course focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of communication programs designed to change health behavior of individuals, groups, and entire populations.

This course overviews majors themes of interpersonal health communication including issues such as physician-patient communication, relationships for individuals with health issues, and the relationship of communication to physical and mental health outcomes.

Focuses on how mediated communication is transforming health/medical practice and affecting health policy processes. Topics range from the way mediated communication sources affect the search for an acquisition of health information to the way these technologies are used to affect the behavior of individuals, groups and entire populations.

This course examines the language and social interaction (LSI) approach to studying human communication. We consider the epistemological and theoretical underpinnings of LSI scholarship;overview key research traditions within LSI; and explore the unique contributions of LSI scholarship to the communication discipline across its several subfields.

This course focuses on the intersections of law, policy, and technology, examining attempts to regulate digital media and information flows.  The course considers the tensions among freedom, control, individual liberty, and societal good inherent in attempts to regulate a developing media landscape.

Information law and regulation; focus on the historical and contemporary legal and regulatory issues stemming from the application of information technology.

Systematic consideration of the theories and strategies of assessment, planning, development and change at the organizational and programmatic level in non-profit-seeking information organizations.

This seminar examines the intellectual foundations for librarianship as a discipline, the development of a broadened understanding of pervasive theories and research issues and the identification and exploration of the research literature in librarianship and pertinent allied fields.

Audience studies investigates the nature of audiences, how audiences emerge, and how audiences can be studied. Theories to be critiqued include weak/strong effects, uses and gratifications, reader response theory, cultural studies.

The course provides an overview of theories, principles, and research that inform the practice of media education worldwide. Theories of media education, various approaches to media pedagogy, and contemporary research problems are addressed.

This course examines the history of print and electronic news media, considering them not as freestanding institutions but as key parts or aspects of wider cultural and political developments, and situating them in their historical context.