Required Courses
EM 500, Introduction to emerging media
Professor: TBD
Semester: Fall 2014
Type: Required Course
Description: Introducing emerging and new media from a variety of perspectives, including historical, economic and psychological. Social science research perspectives on emerging media effects and policy issues surrounding emerging media form the second half of the course. Applications of theory to a variety of topics and social issues will be discussed.
Skills Learned: Analysis of media patterns and effects
Sample Syllabus
EM 737, The Marketplace v. Regulation: Emerging Media and Communication Policy
Professor: T. Barton Carter
Semester: Fall 2014
Type: Required Course
Description: The course surveys the laws and regulations that apply to emerging media and probes the major policy issues in detail with a particular emphasis on the situation in the U.S. It covers issues in traditional legislative and regulatory arrangements from privacy to equal access, spectrum allocation to market concentration, and intellectual property to secrecy. The course explores how digital services can collect data in ways that can have poorly understood ramifications.
Output: Research analysis and recommendations for client, personal research paper
Skills Learned: Analysis of media law and regulation, effectively analyze new issues in media legislation.
Sample Syllabus
EM 747, #Trending Insights: Social Data Analysis and Visualization
Professor: Jacob Groshek
Semester: Spring 2015
Type: Required Course
Description:Learn methods for large-scale data analysis and visualization. This includes the application of relevant user and concept networks, time and spatial models, and sentiment analysis. This course has a dual structure where students learn to not only carry out advanced analyses of large datasets, but also engage with visually representing and effectively communicating those results to a lay audience. As such, students leave equipped with a wide-ranging skillset to scrape data, mine data, and present data in fields of specific areas of inquiry.
Output: Analysis of audience network for real-life client and visualization of influencer networks
Skills Learned: Big data visualization and analysis, Gephi, DiscoverText, Crimson Hexagon, presentation skills
Sample Syllabus
EM 757, User-Producers 2.0: Developing Interactivity
Professor: Lei Guo
Semester: Spring 2015
Type: Required Course
Description: Introduction you to principles of interactivity and a hands‐on experience on designing an interactive work. Topics on media technology, animation, interface design, information architecture, interaction design, and html5‐based application opportunities are covered. Through a series of projects, students gain experience in the research, design, production, and evaluation of a content‐rich, user‐centered interactive website.
Output: Building personal or client website
Skills Learned: Interaction Design, user research, HTML, CSS, WordPress, Dreamweaver
Sample Syllabus
EM 777, Collaboratory: Extended Seminar
Professor: James Katz
Semester: Fall 2014 – Summer 2015
Type: Required Course
Description: This three-semester course introduces students to the theories, method and conventions of applied research in communication and the social sciences. Students work as a group with a local organization (the “project sponsor”) in the Boston area to design and implement a research project. They also undertake original research and organize a graduate research conference at the end of the year.
Current Group Project: Research on mobile application to aid in management of gestational diabetes
Skills Learned: Qualitative data analysis (observation, interview, focus groups), quantitative data analysis using SPSS and NVivo, event planning, leadership and teamwork, creating scope of work and project timelines, client relations.
EM 797, Connecting Humans: Networks, History and Social Media
Professor: Jacob Groshek
Semester: Summer 2015
Type: Required Course
Description:This course offers a critical survey of the cultural, social, and political impacts of new communication technologies, including the printing press, film, television and online including mobile and social media. Special attention is paid to networks and their relationship to the ways individuals, groups and organizations communicate within society.Looking at the changing nature of networks in media from broadcast network models to social network ones, 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.
Skills Learned: Developing own social and information network, critical analysis of media theories and effects
Sample Syllabus
Elective Courses
EM 593, Psychology of Emerging Media
Professor: Mina Tsya-Vogel
Semester: Spring
Type: Elective Course
Sample Syllabus
FT 701, Media in Evolution
Professor: Cathy Perron (Eaton)
Semester: Fall
Type: Elective Course
Sample Syllabus
CM 743, New Media and Public Relations
Professor: Edward Downes
Semester: Fall
Type: Elective Course
Sample Syllabus
FT 703, Media Business Entrepreneurship
Professor: Judi Luber
Semester: Spring
Type: Elective Course
Sample Syllabus