Media in American Society
Media technologies do more than carry a message. They shape the conditions in which a message can be made, circulated and understood.
This course brings media theory into a conversation with the people making images, sounds and public narratives. We ask how representation works, how ownership shapes a media system, and what independent and collective practices make possible.
Students encounter these questions through readings, screenings and discussion, then develop their own arguments as video essays and audio/video podcasts. Theory returns to the practical choices of a frame, a voice, an edit and a source.
Media as environment
How does a medium change the conditions of everyday life?
The opening inquiry treats technology as a cultural environment. Students examine how a familiar medium organizes attention, communication and social experience, then question the assumption that a device is simply a neutral tool.
- In conversation
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Updating to Remain the Same.
- In class
- Media definitions, historical examples and a media-literacy workshop.
Representation, power and social movements
Who frames an event, and how does an audience interpret it?
Media coverage of social movements becomes a way to study how meanings are produced and contested. Stuart Hall’s account of encoding and decoding meets the work of alternative media makers and the decisions through which protest becomes a public story.
- In conversation
- Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding”; Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching.
- In class
- Newsreel Collective films and Eyes on the Prize excerpts inform discussion and a video essay.
William Greaves / Black Journal
What changes when the people represented also control the editorial voice?
Public broadcasting and documentary experimentation are studied together. Black Journal and Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One give students ways to discuss authorship, the camera’s authority and the construction of a documentary situation.
- In conversation
- Devorah Heitner on Black Journal; bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze”; Trinh T. Minh-ha, When the Moon Waxes Red.
- In class
- Close viewing of Black Journal, Greaves and Marlon Riggs’s Ethnic Notions.
Ownership, persuasion and media systems
Who owns the channel, and what does that ownership make visible?
Advertising, media consolidation and platform algorithms enter the same field of inquiry. Students consider the structures behind a seemingly individual message, including how persuasion, distribution and commercial power shape what an audience encounters.
- In conversation
- Edward Bernays, Propaganda; Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent; Hito Steyerl, “Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?”
- In class
- John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Adam Curtis excerpts and contemporary platform analysis.
Experimental media / collective practice
How can improvisation and collective organization become media forms?
DJ Spooky, Moor Mother, George Lewis and the AACM bring sampling, systems and collective practice into media history. Their work opens a discussion of how cultural production is organized and how several people can create a language together.
- In conversation
- Paul D. Miller, Rhythm Science; George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself; Fred Moten, In the Break.
- In class
- Remix, performance, archival recordings and collaborative research.
Remix, simulation and digital interpretation
How do irony and ambiguity operate in contemporary political media?
Students bring the course’s earlier questions to social platforms, where a message can circulate through remix, repetition and conflicting readings. Interpretation itself becomes a problem to investigate: how context changes, how simulation operates and how an audience decides what it sees.
- In conversation
- Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation; Hito Steyerl, “A Sea of Data”; Christina Sharpe, In the Wake.
- In class
- Contemporary social-media analysis and a final reflection on research and collaboration.
Research becomes a media argument
Students develop individual or collaborative video essays and audio/video podcasts, joining research and citation with an editorial voice. A final reflective project considers what was learned through the research, the media choices and the collaboration.