Program Details : University Catalogs : University of Minnesota

JOUR 3551 - The Business of Digital Media: Innovation, Disruption, and Adaptation (TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Digital media enterprises have uprooted many established industries and continue to be among the most important factors shaping our economy and society today. Where do these innovations come from? Why do some startups prosper while others fail? How do legacy firms respond to disruptions to their business models? What makes adaptations possible? What makes them risky? Learn to analyze and evaluate the economic strategies of existing digital media firms across various sectors of society including news, entertainment, social media, mobile, and retail. Assess their impacts on cultural and civic life for better and for worse. Use these skills to incubate your own ideas for the next great media innovations of the future.

JOUR 3552 - Technology, Communication & Global Society (GP)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall

This course examines the various ways in which technology continues to evolve, and to have a role in ongoing societal changes. The course focuses on unpacking the specific ways in which technology are evolving, and connecting those changes to impacts on communication and media A variety of theories or perspectives relevant or related to technology use and global communication will be considered to help make sense of the interplay between the technology use and societies in a global setting. The course is divided into three main parts: first, understanding of the specifics of relevant technology; second, connecting the technical features to theoretical views of technology; third, examining global patterns of technology use in media and communication. The readings and discussions place special emphasis on specific forms of technology, including mobile phones, Web, and social media. Grounded in a global context, we will investigate the political, cultural, social, technological, and economic conditions that shape and are shaped by the presence of the Internet at the national and cross-national levels; the effects of technology use on the form and content of mass communication at the global level; and the implications of technology use for human and social relations across national borders.

JOUR 3751 - Digital Media and Culture (AH, TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall, Spring & Summer

How have digital media innovations like social media, mobile phones, artificial intelligence, drones and games shaped and been shaped by a culture and society globally? Learn to critically examine the function of digital media in your life. Take away a socio-historical understanding of digital media innovation, and the social, political, and economical impact of new media in creativity, industry, and culture from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Topics range from the concept of branding in an online context, to the varied uses of digital media in the context of journalism, social mobilization, law and privacy, business, globalization, content creation, and beyond. You will read, discuss, and debate cutting edge material from documentaries, podcasts, popular press, and academic literature. This course balances local contexts with global perspectives, and provides details into the practicalities of working and living in a new media environment.

JOUR 5552 - Law of Internet Communication

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Digital communication technologies continue to raise a variety of legal issues, including whether and how (and which) traditional media and regulatory laws will apply, and how policy should be applied through regulatory law to enhance and regulate that communication. This course is conducted as a seminar, with an open discussion of legal precedent and the influence of policy on internet and digital communications. This course covers the First Amendment as it applies in a digital era as well as regulatory topics like net neutrality, broadband access, privacy, and copyright.

COMM 3211 - Introduction to Media Studies

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall, Spring & Summer

Historical development and current issues in electronic media technologies and programming. Effects of governmental, industrial, and public organizations on message content. Problem areas of electronic media.

COMM 4291 - New Telecommunication Media

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall

Development and current status of new telecommunication media such as cable TV, satellites, DBS, MDS, and video disk/cassettes. Technology, historical development, regulation, and programming of these media and their influence on individuals, organizations, and society. prereq: 3211 or instr consent

CSCL 3310W - The Rhetoric of Everyday Life (CIV, WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

How discourse reproduces consciousness and persuades us to accept that consciousness and the power supporting it. Literary language, advertising, electronic media; film, visual and musical arts, built environment, and performance. Techniques for analyzing language, material culture, and performance. (previously 3173W)

CSCL 3334 - Monsters, Robots, Cyborgs (LITR)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

Historical/critical reading of figures (e.g., uncanny double, monstrous aberration, technological hybrid) in mythology, literature, and film, from classical epic to sci-fi, cyberpunk, and Web. (previously 3461)

GEOG 3561 - Principles of Geographic Information Science

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Geog 3561/ Geog 5561
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

Introduction to study of geographic information systems (GIS) for geography and non-geography students. Topics include GIS application domains, data models and sources, analysis methods and output techniques. Lectures, readings and hands-on experience with GIS software. prereq: Jr or sr

HIST 3705 - The History of the Premodern Book

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Periodic Summer

The fifteenth-century European transformations wrought by Gutenberg's moveable type printing and the new systems of knowledge which printed books sustained in subsequent centuries. Precise focus on the technological transformations of print itself, including the mechanical reproduction of images, along with the new institutions created by print like libraries and the print public sphere. Our own 21st century digital multimedia transformations will continually serve as a comparative context for thinking about the premodern past.

HSCI 3331 - Technology and American Culture (HIS, TS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	HSci 3331/5331
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

American culture(s) and technology, pre-Columbian times to present. Artisanal, biological, chemical, communications, energy, environment, electronic, industrial, military, space and transportation technologies explained in terms of economic, social, political and scientific causes/effects.

HSCI 3715 - History of Modern Technology: Waterwheels to the Web (HIS, TS)

Credits:	3.0 -4.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies:	HSci 1715/3715
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

This course explores the many technological systems that have come to span our globe, alongside the widespread persistence of traditional technologies. We start with the earliest glimmerings of modernity and industrialization, and move on in time to the building of global technological networks. How have people changed their worlds through technologies like steam engines and electronics? Is it a paradox that many traditional agricultural and household technologies have persisted? How have technologies of war remade the global landscape? We ask how business and government have affected technological entrepreneurs, from railroads to technologies of global finance. We end by considering the tension between technologies that threaten our global environment and technologies that offer us hopes of a new world.

HSCI 4321 - History of Computing (TS, HIS)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	CSci 4921/HSci 4321
Typically offered:	Fall Even, Spring Odd Year

Developments in the last 150 years; evolution of hardware and software; growth of computer and semiconductor industries and their relation to other business areas; changing relationships resulting from new data-gathering and analysis techniques; automation; social and ethical issues.

SCMC 3001W - History of Cinema and Media Culture (WI)

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Genealogy of cinema in relation to other media, notably photography, radio, television/video, and the Internet. Representative films from decisive moments in global development of cinema. Rise/fall of Hollywood studio system, establishment of different national cinemas, cinematic challenges to cultural imperialism, emergence of post-cinematic technologies.

TH 4555 - Audio Technology

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall

Sound as science. Technology to create/manipulate sound. Recording techniques. Effects/signal processing. Microphone/mixing techniques. prereq: 1501 or instr consent

TH 5554 - Multimedia Production for Live Performance

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall

Use of multimedia production technologies in actual production. Students apply knowledge/skill in conjunction with an artistic team on a production and are an integral part of the development/realization of that production. prereq: 5553 or instr consent

WRIT 3371W - Technology, Self, and Society (TS, WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Cultural history of American technology. Social values that technology represents in shifts from handicraft to mass production/consumption, in modern transportation, communication, bioengineering. Ethical issues in power, work, identity, our relation to nature.

WRIT 3577W - Rhetoric, Technology, and the Internet (TS, WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

This course examines the rich and complex ways people are seeking to inform and persuade others via the internet. Western rhetorical theories have adapted to address spoken, written, visual, and digital communication. The internet incorporates aspects of all of these modes of communication, but it also requires us to revisit how we have understood them. Students in Rhetoric, Technology, and the Internet will reinforce their understandings of rhetorical theories and the internet as a technology. The class will also ask students to read current scholarly work about the internet, and develop the critical tools needed to complement, extend, or challenge that work.

WRIT 4501 - Usability and Human Factors in Technical Communication

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Writ 4501/Writ 5501
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

Usability is concerned with how people interact with design and technology; usability is commonly known as the "ease of use" of products and technologies by a range of users. This course emphasizes usability and user research and will explore the intersection of usability and technical communication. We will investigate definitions of usability and user-centered design principles, and we will explore a variety of usability research methods including heuristic evaluation, personas, and usability testing. The course will focus heavily on usability testing of web sites, a common technical communication task that involves observation and interviews of human participants interacting with a web site.

University Catalogs

New Media Studies Minor