This course examines humor as a significant form of creative expression in social and political life. In recent decades, scholars of all persuasions from the humanities, social sciences, and even hard sciences have examined this subject through a critical lens, leading to the development of an interdisciplinary field known as humor studies. This course provides an introduction to that burgeoning field.

This course examines humor as a significant form of creative expression in social and political life. In recent decades, scholars of all persuasions from the humanities, social sciences, and even hard sciences have examined this subject through a critical lens, leading to the development of an interdisciplinary field known as humor studies. This course provides an introduction to that burgeoning field.

This course examines humor as a significant form of creative expression in social and political life. In recent decades, scholars of all persuasions from the humanities, social sciences, and even hard sciences have examined this subject through a critical lens, leading to the development of an interdisciplinary field known as humor studies. This course provides an introduction to that burgeoning field.

This course examines humor as a significant form of creative expression in social and political life. In recent decades, scholars of all persuasions from the humanities, social sciences, and even hard sciences have examined this subject through a critical lens, leading to the development of an interdisciplinary field known as humor studies. This course provides an introduction to that burgeoning field.

This course is designed to offer a framework for understanding the processes involved in news production and its impact on public opinion. We will examine various social forces that shape news content, including individual, political, economic, and institutional factors. We will also examine research and theory on the implications of today's new media environment, with a focus on its relationship with citizens' engagement in public life.

This course is a graded introduction to the Communication major, designed to welcome advanced transfer students into the program and address some of their specific needs. This course builds on prior college experiences and introduces students to resources for upper-level UMass Communication majors.

In this seminar, we will consider how children make meaning of and navigate through their complex relationships with media and consumer culture, as well as the implications of those relationships for children?s individual and collective well-being.

Our digital, social and civic life is increasingly powered by data. What we read, watch and buy is shaped by customization algorithms that are built based on a trove of digital behavioral data (e.g., Facebook 'likes' and YouTube viewing history). This class will provide a broad picture of how our internet behavior is being tracked and analyzed for user psychology and public opinion as well as the implications of data mining for privacy and civic engagement. The course includes workshops in technical skills for social media data mining and visualization.

Audiences for mass media are notoriously difficult to define, find, and study because they are dispersed, shifting, and interact with media in complex ways. This course will look at how both the academy and media industries come to claim knowledge and understanding of audiences, in terms of their theoretical and methodological approaches. Topics will include debates about audience power and activity, audience segmentation, how audiences have changed over time, rhetorical uses of ?the audience,? and the distinction between audiences and markets.

Citizenships and belongings are unstable, dynamic, ongoing sites of struggle that animate one another. This course looks at citizenships and belongings as communication practices that include and produce multiple and competing discourses, relations, and lived experiences. Using critical women of color, feminist, queer and performance theories, the course begins and centers questions on citizenships and belongings from and through their systemic exclusions, namely those whose subjectivities, bodies, identities and relations place them outside the bounds of the norm.