Survey of Mass Media - CST 114
https://courses.vccs.edu/courses/CST114-SurveyofMassMedia
Effective: 2023-05-01
Course Description
Examines the history and current understanding of mass communication. Covers print media (newspapers, magazines, and books), electronic media (radio, television, film, the Internet), advertising, public relations, and mass media theory, research, and ethics.
Lecture 3 hours. Total 3 hours per week.
3 credits
The course outline below was developed as part of a statewide standardization process.
General Course Purpose
The course is intended to help students understand and recognize the need for media literacy skills in an ever-changing society where mass communication and technology play a prominent role in our everyday lives. Identify the changes history has played in the evolution of mass communication.
Course Objectives
- Professional Readiness
- Define media literacy and implement media literacy skills.
- Identify how to apply skills within mass media professional environments, and incorporate those skills for a targeted audience
- Critical Thinking
- Evaluate authenticity of broadcast, print, and online mass media messages.
- Effectively communicate how mass media influences society and individuals.
Major Topics to be Included
- Define media literacy and evaluate all types of messages.
- Define aliteracy and its prevalence in personal and public context.
- Identify how advertising can manipulate or enhance messages in various mass mediums.
- Explain how non-advertising messages may be manipulated and reinterpreted in various media
- Recognize authenticity of mass media messages within various mediums.
- Identify and apply skills to improve media literacy.
- Summarize the history, development, and major technological developments in mass communication.
- Summarize the limitations and benefits of algorithms within mass media.
- Discuss how journalism and news media have changed over time.
- Define media convergence and its effects on various mass mediums.
- Analyze how the field of public relations has changed based upon technological developments.
- Identify key historical media inventions, societal conditions, and technology advancements that influenced the distribution of information via mass communication.
- Recognize the effects of mass media upon society.
- Examine how mass media shapes personal and public perception.
- Identify how social media has affected society on various levels.
- Analyze how race, gender and culture are portrayed in the media.
- Recognize mass media effects in governance, globalization, law and ethics.
- Identify, research and define a career within the mass communication field.
- Analyze the role ethics play in various fields of mass communication.
- Analyze differences in news coverage based upon various mediums
- Clarify how the First Amendment influences mass media.
- Discuss the role that economics play in shaping media practices and consumption.
- Identify and compare personal media consumption and its development over time.
- Discuss how media conglomeration has affected media consumption and increased the need for strong media literacy skills.