This course gives students hands-on instruction in how to use digital media tools to produce interactive and media rich online stories. Students will learn key concepts and design principles in web technologies and programming (e.g., XHTML, CSS, JavaScript), video editing, and animation. Students will develop a website that presents a multipart investigative story, using slideshows, videos, and animations. Students will learn how to capture engaging photo and video footage to create an effective multimedia experience in postproduction.

Students use emerging digital technology to develop and test innovations in journalism and media. Emerging technologies are applied to journalism and media to create and test new storytelling formats, production techniques, media management strategies, and social media approaches. Students consider how these innovations can engage citizens across time and space, provide much-needed context and customization to content, interactive entertainment, and new business models to support and sustain journalism and the media in a fragmented, and mobile, digital future.

This course examines the role of communication in society. Taught with a special topics focus in each semester, the course will examine the important impacts that communication processes, relationships, and messages have in society. Topics of focus include corporate social responsibility; community networks; community health campaigns; political communication; and communication in civil society organizations, among others.

This course will serve as a broad introduction to theories, perspectives, and empirical evidence related to organizational communication in a wide range of organizations (e.g., nonprofit, for-profit, governmental, communal) and in a variety of contexts (e.g., industry, educational, social services, advocacy). Students will learn about historical, current, and future issues; changes and challenges facing organizations; and the communication-relevant aspects of these issues. They will gain practice in applying theoretical perspectives and concepts to actual organizational situations and settings.

Drawing on existing theory and research, this course examines issues of usage, adoption, and performance of new and established communication technologies in the workplace and other contexts. The course also considers opportunities and challenges that mediated communication presents for both users of these tools and society more generally. It also will expose students to a range of new technologies used by people to coordinate, collaborate, and communicate with one another.

Introduces students to a set of social science research methods that are used in the communication discipline and in workplace and organizational contexts. At the end of this course, students should have a basic understanding of several general research methods used by communication scholars and have gained an appreciation for the ethical considerations in conducting human subjects research. Students will gain knowledge and practice of collection methods such as questionnaires, experiments, structured interviews, focus groups, structured observations, and content analysis.

This course focuses on building skills and knowledge in the analysis of communication problems in real-world settings. Students learn to define key concepts and issues, review current literature, and empirically examine a core communication problem in a specific context.

Examines the nature and impact of the media of mass communication in society. Particular attention is paid to emerging media technology, including the internet and other digital technologies. Students learn four primary ways new technology influences media and society, including: 1) how media professionals and members of the public increasingly create content using new media technologies; 2) the nature of mediated content; 3) the relationships between and among media and relevant publics; and 4) the structure, culture, and management of media organizations and systems. Students learn five areas of media technology, including: 1) acquisition tools; 2) storage technologies; 3) processing devices; 4) distribution technologies; and 5) display, access, or presentation tools.

Explores the strategic use of communication by individuals and groups to facilitate persuasion and change. Topics covered vary by instructor, but may include theories of behavior and social change, strategic communication, interpersonal influence and diffusion, media advocacy and social marketing, argumentation, discourse, and conflict.

The Capstone Seminar requires students to integrate theory and practice through the preparation and presentation of an intensive project. Students will design their own original work that includes integrating, synthesizing, and analyzing fundamental communication theories, concepts, and research methods; show proficiency in gathering and using evidence to study and understand communication processes and consequences; demonstrate advanced written and oral presentation skills; apply communication theories and concepts to professional and civic life. The Capstone course is taken in the last semester of the M.C.M. program.

Examination of group and organizational leadership from a communicative perspective, integrating both theory and current practice. Topics of focus include leadership roles relative to organizational culture, diversity, organizational assessment, support technology, organizational change, ethics, and leadership and organizational development. The course includes informational and experiential learning approaches.

Advanced master's-level course focused on the diverse array of topics studied in organizational communication research. We will examine the role of communication in issues of socialization and identification; power, conflict, and control; decision-making and leadership; ethics, performance, and feedback; turnover, burnout, and exit; culture; structure and networks; as well as image and reputation. It is based on theory and research, but will also address application.

This course provides a theoretical orientation to communication processes in social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, and virtual worlds such as Second Life). Readings will be selected from a variety of disciplines, with a major emphasis on mediated communication theory and phenomena.  Topics include issues of self-presentation, identity, privacy, youth and social media, political participation, social networks, social capital, virtual worlds, collection action, and uses of social media in the workplace.  Methodological and ethical approaches to studying social media data will also be discussed.

This class is designed to give an overview of the major fields of study in the area of health communication. This includes the areas of health communication campaigns, multicultural health communication, physician-patient communication, and communication among health professionals. The ultimate goal of health communication is to increase health and satisfaction by encouraging healthier behaviors, medical compliance, and more efficient communication of medical information.

This class focuses on the foundational and contemporary research that makes up the study of interpersonal communication. Its primary goal is to give students an understanding of the origins and the current directions of much of the scholarship on interpersonal communication.

The last 30 years have seen a fundamental transformation in society. Characterized as a transformation from industrial to informational, this new system is marked by the increased velocity and fluidity of capital, goods, people, and ideas. Facilitated by new information and communication technologies (ICT), the increased flows of both objects and ideas have led to shifting notions of identity, nation, democracy, and society among others. In this class we seek to more fully understand the shifting nature of society today particularly as this new and complex world intersects with media and communication. We pay particular attention to considering the different causes for change in society, as well as the new complex human- and, at times, computer-mediated configurations. Finally, we focus on how these shifts are both impacted by and impact media and communications.