Tagged: Introduction to New Media

My Spring 2015 Classes at Fordham

Although Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not until next week and it’s 20° F outside, we’ve already started classes for the “spring” semester at Fordham. (Yes, it seems much too early to me, too.) Since my two classes there already met, I am lifting my self-imposed embargo on promoting them.1

Introduction to Electronic Media

I have taught this course five times since 2007. Despite its odd and possibly antiquated title—after all, what media isn’t electronic these days?—it is one of my favorite classes because we get to explore radio, television, and digital media with a reasonable amount of depth. It’s nice to spend several weeks to explain some nuanced concepts from these media with some detail. For someone who does a lot of survey classes, it is a rare luxury not to feel so rushed when I want to explain radio frequency allocations, dayparts, and why computers use hexadecimal numbers to undergraduate students… or anyone who will listen.

The class meets on Wednesday mornings, 8:30–11:15 AM.

Introduction to New Media

This course will someday be the foundation of a digital/participatory media concentration in Fordham’s Communication and Media Studies undergraduate major, but for now, the curriculum is still developing. As a result, the department has given me free reign over this introduction to studying digital media. However, one of my issues with a lot of digital media scholarship is that, at least to me, it resembles science fiction. I’d rather confront social and cultural issues in digital media from either a historical or contemporary perspective. Instead of poring over heavily theoretical works in an introductory class, I am relying more on texts that explain a cultural issue, such as how young people use social media, to give students an understanding of digital media with some concrete data and examples.

As I tell students on the first day of class, it’s a graduate-style class for undergraduate students.

The class meets on Tuesday afternoons, 2:30–5:15 PM.


  1. This “self-imposed embargo” was because I had not finished my syllabi until early this week. 

My Fordham Semester Has Sprung

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Springtime at Fordham University, Lincoln Center.

Another semester begins this week at Fordham University, Lincoln Center and with it, I’m making available the syllabi for the two classes I’m teaching there this semester.

Introduction to Media Industries

This course is an overview of the mass media communication industries, including print, electronic, and digital media. We will examine the institutional, social and technological histories of these media, the influence of economic factors in shaping content, and issues surrounding regulatory policy. I like to give special emphasis to the media’s role in society, the concentration of ownership, the impact of new communication technologies, and increasing convergence of particular media.

This course meets on Thursday evenings, 6:00 – 8:45 PM.

Introduction to New Media

This course examines the cultural impact of new digital technologies such as the Internet, telephonic communication, and audiovisual media. We will survey the origins of digital communication and the Internet and engage closely with contemporary the work of seven contemporary on the impact and effects digital technologies, the Internet, the institutions that control these technologies.

This course meets on Wednesday mornings, 8:30 – 11:15 AM.

Introduction to New Media, Fall 2013, Syllabus

The syllabus for Introduction to New Media, at Fordham University, Lincoln Center, is now available on my professional website.

From the course description:

This course examines the cultural impact of new digital technologies such as the Internet and new telephonic and audiovisual media. We will survey the origins of digital communication and the Internet and engage closely with contemporary scholarship on digital technologies, the Internet, the institutions that control these technologies.

In preparation for this course, I wrote the class last week alerting them to a few important points before we get started:

  • This is a "graduate-style, undergraduate course." The class is small and the material is open-ended so we’ll run it like a seminar.
  • We are not using Blackboard this semester. Its most recent "update" has the responsiveness of a 100-year-old tortoise. I’m done with it.
  • I didn’t provide the bookstore with a list if books because I expect us to change our plan somewhat as the course progresses.
  • Students will contribute to the "design" of this course throughout the fall as much as I did when I outlined a plan in August.

The class begins on Tuesday, September 3.