Emerging Media Studies

  • COM EM 700: Introduction to Emerging Media Studies
    Drawing on scientific research and relevant news & industry examples this course will examine topics related to new media and communication technologies. The first portion of the course will explore key dimensions related to new communication technology. The latter portion will include deep dives into particular media technologies (ranging from smart phones and laptops to newer, emerging media formats such as social games, mobile virtual reality, and wearable sensors), each characterized to varying extents by these dimensions. Throughout the course we will explore relevant theoretical concepts and processes related to new media and communication technologies. Along the way we will identify patterns of media usage and, in turn, review the psychological effects and social consequences of that usage. Additionally, we will consider the larger context in which these technologies -- and the means for empirically studying their use and effects -- have developed.
  • COM EM 747: Trending Insights: Social Data Analysis and Visualization
    This course familiarizes students with social -scientific methods for large scale data analysis and visualization, including the application of relevant user and concept networks, time and spatial models, sentiment mapping, and comparison of matrices. In addition, the use of germane software in emerging and digital media research is developed. Most importantly, however, this course has a dual structure where students learn to not only carry our advanced analyses of large datasets, they also engage with how to visually represent with a wide-ranging skillset to scrape data, mine data, and present data in fields of specific areas of inquiry.
  • COM EM 755: Measuring Media Effects
    EM 755 provides training in the logic, design, and implementation of experimental research methods for measuring media effects on individual users. The course includes a practicum component, in which students employ biometric research tools in the Communication Research Center (CRC) to conduct original research on the use and effects of emerging media technologies. To this end, the course will consist of a combination of regular class meetings and laboratory activity. By the end of this workshop course, students will have a sound understanding of the underlying rationale and purpose of experimental research and hands-on experience completing data collection and analysis related to media processing and effects.
  • COM EM 757: User-Producers 2.0: Developing Interactivity
    The shift in medial production toward dynamic user-production is harnessed in this class. Students will evaluate and critique prevailing practices in co- creative media output as well as become proficient in developing online media with cutting edge and open source software tools. Technical aspects of this class include HTML, CSS, and Wordpress, as well as audience interfaces and analytics.
  • COM EM 777: Masters Collaboratory Project
    This year long course introduces students to the theories, method and conventions of applied research in communication and the social sciences. It aims to do this through reading, practical applications and in-class discussions. Students will have the opportunity to work with local organization (the "project sponsor") in the Boston area to design and implement a research project. Throughout the process, students will work closely with their peers, the sponsor and the course instructors to develop the project and to evaluate work in progress.
  • COM EM 793: Psychology of Emerging Media
    This course examines the psychological aspects of emerging media. Theories and empirical research from communication, psychology, and human-computer studies will be used to explore: psychological responses to new media technologies; uses and effects of technological features, such as agency, navigability, and modality, on users' thoughts, emotions, and behaviors; the nature and dynamic of interpersonal and group interaction when mediated by new media technologies; cognitive and emotional processing of new media; issues of source, self, and privacy altered by new media.
  • 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: Upper-level Seminar
    The seminar will aim to enhance the core competencies in the areas of teaching, project management and leadership, communication, and self-awareness. Further, it will aim to add new perspectives in the areas of research skills and discipline-specific knowledge. Designed to develop and refine professional skills among graduate students. This course entails reflexive consideration of teaching practices and praxis, methods of professionalization, skills for success in the academic and non- academic intellectual environments, and effective self-presentation in higher- level settings. Additionally, on an intermittent basis, researchers and speakers from a variety of backgrounds present their views about research, theory, and professional achievement.
  • 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 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
    Specific issues in emerging media are brought into focus allowing for a thorough investigation. This course's content offers faculty and students an opportunity to explore a particular question. When the course is offered, the particular topic of focus will depend on the interests of faculty members, and will not be standardized.
  • COM EM 888: Doctoral Collaboratory Project
    This course, which takes place during years 1 and 2 of the PhD program, provides the student with 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. Emphasis is given to enhancing students' pedagogical and professional practices.
  • 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.