ENG 3910 MEDIA STORM
This course is a rhetorical approach to media literacy and information-age survival skills. Beginning with the advent of cable TV in the 1970s, to satellite TV in the 1980s and the World Wide Web in the 1990s, we are living in what media critic Tod Gitlin calls “a torrent of images and sounds” that overwhelm our lives. From The Sopranos and Sex in the City to Survivor and from MTV to C-SPAN and ESPN, we are awash in media 24/7. There can be little denial that even now, arguably still in the dawning period of the information age, in order to prevent citizens from being blown away by the data-storm of information technologies education must provide not only exposure to new media tools but also some principles of critical analysis about information technology and the rapidly changing paradigms of literacy in an information society. While we will be primarily concerned with television, the most ubiquitous of modern media, we will also be concerned with newer media such as the Internet and home entertainment such as video, DVD, and streaming services, as well as more traditional media such as film, magazines and newspapers.
Course Types
Advanced Studies
Offered
Offered summer.