Courses
The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.
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COM EM 795: Gamification & Motivational Design of User Experiences
This courses examines motivational design, in which the engaging qualities common to games and other play activities are leveraged to drive particular behaviors in domains ranging from classroom curriculum, commercial purchases, physical exercise, and energy consumption. Using scientific research and industry examples this course will examine the key processes and concepts that make up such designs. Through seminar discussion students compare different theoretical approaches to motivation, consider the potential uses of emerging technologies for new motivational designs, and discuss the ethics of designing for behavior change. -
COM EM 797: Connecting Humans: Networks, History and Social Media
This course offers a critical survey of the cultural, social, and political impacts of emerging communication technologies, as they have advanced over time to contemporarily include online, mobile and social media. Special attention will be paid to networks and their relationship to the ways individuals, groups and organizations communicate within society. Our work here situates the changing nature of networks in media from broadcast network models to social network ones. As such, it is both historically informed and theoretically inclusive. An important component of study also incorporates an immersive social network experience as part of this class, which is to say that the class becomes its own online social network and students are peer collaborators. -
COM EM 808: Pedagogy of Instruction
Designed to develop and refine teaching skills among graduate students. This course entails reflexive consideration of teaching practices and praxis. -
COM EM 831: Critical Studies, History and Philosophy of Emerging Media
This course develops a high level of sophistication for students in the emerging media studies field concerning critical studies of emerging media as well as philosophical perspectives on emerging media. It aims to do this through readings, in-class discussions and analytical writing assignments. Through group discussion and classroom lecturers and analysis, students will develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between critical approaches and philosophical and historical studies of emerging media. The merits and limitations of different methodological approaches and intellectual approaches are probed. -
COM EM 847: Time, Place & Social Data: Advanced Issues in Large Scale Analysis & Visualization
This course provides a specialized emphasis on data processing and predictive modeling through time series and panel regression modeling. In doing so, it trains students in advanced social-scientific methods for large-scale data analysis and visualization. This course also incorporates approaches that integrate the analysis and graphing of social data and corresponding networks using both time and spatial models. -
COM EM 850: Advanced Communication Theory
Explore and discuss a range of classic communication theories and models through seminars. The enduring theme of the course is to use and advance the communication theories and models to explicate the emerging media uses and effects. -
COM EM 855: Computer-Assisted Text Analysis
Given the large volume of text data available in different social media sites, computer-assisted analysis has become extremely important in the field of media and communication, be it industry or academia. This course introduces students to several advanced approaches of computer-assisted text analysis, including semantic network analysis, sentiment analysis, topic modeling and text visualization. The objective of this course is to teach students to apply these methods to test/advance/develop theories or to solve real world problems. The focus of this course is on media and communication. Students can apply the knowledge and skills acquired to any social science research that deals with text-based data. -
COM EM 861: Special Topics
Graduate Prerequisites: Consent of advisor and instructor. Supervised reading, fieldwork, or research for student's specific needs. Topics and activities are structured as needed when a regularly scheduled class in the specific subject area is unavailable. -
COM EM 866: Mobile Communication in Contemporary Perspectives
This course develops a high level of sophistication for students in the emerging media studies field in terms of the theories, practices and praxis of mobile communication. It aims to do this through readings, in the field research, individual experiments with practical applications and in class discussion. -
COM EM 877: Policy & Politics in Emerging Media Environments
This course focuses on government-media relations with a focus on the new frontier of media, and as such it largely examines the role of media in politics, policy formation and political campaigns. This is a seminar that attempts to acquaint you with studies of the relationship between politicians and journalists and other media professionals, the nature of news media coverage of politics and the effects of news coverage on the public and policy, with consideration given to a variety or national contexts and media environments. -
COM EM 888: Doctoral Collaboratory Project
This year long course develops a higher level of sophistication for students in the emerging media studies field in terms of the theories,methods and conventions of applied research in communication and the social sciences. -
COM EM 889: Advanced Issues in Emerging Media Content Production
The object of this course is to provide students with substantial theoretical training to understand and interpret the emerging media creation and co-creation activities. We will explore and discuss a range of contemporary theories and concepts, which cut across economical, sociological, cultural and psychological dimensions of analysis. Special attention will be paid to how collaboration takes part in content creation practices. Students are also encouraged to take a step forward developing their own concepts, models and theories to explain the emerging communication phenomena. The enduring theme of this course is to examine how new communication technologies affect the ways people create media content, and how that process changes our lives at the individual, institutional, and societal level. -
COM EM 901: Independent Study
By special arrangement, the student may work independently under the supervision of an EMS professor. -
COM EM 902: Directed Study Emerging Media
Graduate Prerequisites: Consent of advisor and instructor. This course is for PhD students who have completed all required coursework, prior to completion of their qualifying examination. Supervised reading or research for student's specific needs, particularly in addressing the qualifying examination. Directed studies EM 902, which offers four credits, is designed to provide an environment in which the doctoral student supervisor, aided by members of the student's qualifying committee, will oversee the reading and intellectual exploration of the doctoral student taking this course. One of the goals of this course is to assist the student in comprehending and assimilating major works of the field that are relevant to the doctoral- level qualifying examination. Regular class room meetings are not foreseen; rather it will be operated like an independent study course. -
COM EM 909: THESIS PROJECT
Under the close supervision of a faculty member, Masters students will produce an original research publication that makes a contribution to the body of knowledge in the field. -
COM EM 911: EMS INTERNSHIP
Under the supervision of a media professional, and monitored by a faculty member, students will make a contribution to an industry partner or other organization. This contribution might be in capacities that could include, but are not limited to, roles such as social media management, market research, and data analysis. -
COM EM 993: Thesis Research
Graduate Prerequisites: consent of advisor. This course is only taken after the student has successfully passed their qualifying examination and has advanced to PhD candidacy. This research course is designed to provide the doctoral student with close supervision by the thesis advisor, aided by the thesis committee members, as the doctoral student pursues work on the dissertation. It is a 4 credit hour course which may be repeated. -
COM FT 201: Screen Language: The Aesthetics, Grammar and Rhetoric of the Moving Image
In this course, students study and practice the art and craft of expressing themselves persuasively through audio-visual media. The aim is both to familiarize students with the conventions of screen language and to test the validity of those norms. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Creativity/Innovation. -
COM FT 250: Understanding Film
Understanding Film introduces students to key aesthetic aspects of film. Students study a variety of historical and contemporary examples of fiction and nonfiction films that illustrate the expressive possibilities of image and sound. Students learn to analyze, explain and write about these formal elements. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking. -
COM FT 303: Understanding Television
This course examines television (and its foundation in radio) as it emerged, stabilized as an aesthetic and technological form, interacted with other media, was regulated and deregulated, and was shaped by and shaped the culture around it. We will use the sitcom and soap opera genres as aesthetic through-lines for this study and examine their evolution in historical contexts. Throughout the semester, we focus on broadcasting's beginnings, expansion, establishment as the national, mass medium in America, and eventual fracturing into niches. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.