Civic Engagement with New Media

Catalog description

(formerly NMD 2460) This course emphasizes the shifting, context-specific ways in which people persuade, live and make meaning in our democratic society. Students will consider what democratic citizenship means and how to engage productively in civic life, physically and online. In order to foster a rhetorically-informed civic mindset, the course emphasizes rhetorical strategies for meaningful online discourse, considers how digital technologies inform current and historical activism, and challenges students to present and advocate for their own civic ideals. Fundamentally, the course seeks to enable students to think through the ways in which technologies, networks, discourses, and social action are interconnected in individual and communal experiences of civic engagement and democracy. A significant portion (at least 50%) is formal oral presentation. (Satisfies General Education Speech Communication requirement.)