Topics in Media Studies

This graduate seminar treats content analysis as a serious research methodology rather than a survey of media theories, pushing you to think carefully about epistemology, sampling, and the gap between describing and predicting what media artifacts actually do. The semester centers on a single project you build from scratch: pitching a proposal, defining units of analysis and a coding instrument, establishing intercoder reliability, then presenting findings to the class, with weekly workshops doubling as checkpoints. Expect it to feel more like a working lab than a lecture, and treat it as the methods backbone for any thesis or further research in communication and design.