Media, Culture & Decolonization

Catalog description

In this class, students will learn about mass communications, media systems, new media and the ways in which they interconnect with globalization and decolonization. Here, students will contextualize mass media across national contexts paying attention to the ways in which mass media shapes or is shaped by social, political, cultural and economic factors. They will learn how to do critical comparative analyses of mass media across nations and from these analyses make projections about how the media have and will influence key events intra-nationally and internationally. Key among topics to be discussed in the class are cultural flows, globalization, media imperialism, media and power, media and activism, media and politics, media and gender among others. The class will provide the foundation for understanding the theories on global media hierarchies and hegemony by contextualizing media within the histories of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism. At the end of the class, students are expected to produce the first draft of a research project which can be further revised for conference submission or publication in an academic journal.