Stereotypes and Mass Media (COM 336)
Term: 2024-2025 Summer Term
Mass media and popular culture play significant roles in defining how people make sense of various issues - from the mundane to the serious - and the world around them. Through certain representations of "reality," the media cultivate particular norms and values over others. This course focuses on the theoretical debates surrounding mass media and popular culture. Some of the principal themes of the course are media production and consumption, current events programming, film, television, and music. The goal of the course is to provide an understanding of the interactions of mass media and popular culture and to provide some critical tools for analyzing them.