The media studies minor gives you a broad understanding of mass communication and how media shapes society. Open to undergraduates across the university, it builds the research, analysis, and critical-thinking skills to make sense of media in any field. (Students majoring in Media Studies complete these areas within the major and aren't eligible for the minor.)
What Is Media Studies?
Media studies examines how media and mass communication shape culture, politics, and daily life. It's an analytical field: rather than producing campaigns or news, you study how media works, who it serves, and what effects it has, drawing on history, theory, law, and cultural analysis to understand the forces behind the media you encounter every day.
Who It's For
This minor suits students who want to understand media critically and add that lens to their degree, whatever their major. If you're curious about how media influences society, how information moves, and how power and culture shape what we see and read, the minor gives you a flexible way to explore those questions. Its structure fits around almost any major, making it a strong complement to fields across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and professional programs.
Careers and Outcomes
The media studies minor will help you build transferable analytical skills for a wide range of careers, whether or not you pursue a job in a communication field. The ability to research, evaluate media critically, and communicate clearly is valued in fields including law, policy, marketing and communications, education, research, and media industries.
For students already headed toward a specific profession, the minor will help you strengthen your media literacy skills, which are increasingly useful in a world where nearly every field is shaped by media and information. You'll also deepen the judgment and communication skills that employers across all industries look for.
How It Works
The media studies minor requires 24 credits: two required courses (8 credits) and four electives (16 credits) chosen from an approved list. Courses must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a C- or better. You can complete the minor at any point in your degree.
For SOJC majors, only one JCOM course can count toward both your major and your minor.
Required Courses — 8 credits / 2 courses
JCOM 201 Making Sense of Media 4 credits
Examine how media shapes, and is shaped by, power. You'll explore the social, cultural, economic, and political stakes of media in an era of misinformation, tracing the major shifts reshaping the media landscape.
JCOM 311 Introduction to Media Studies 4 credits
Get a historical overview of how media has been studied, with a close look at the major theoretical approaches and how they apply to today's media environment.
Elective Courses and Experiential Learning — 16 credits / 4 courses
Choose four from the courses below. Topics courses are repeatable for credit when the topic changes.
JCOM 301 Gender, Media and Diversity 4 credits
Study the media through the lens of gender, race, ethnicity, and other social divisions. You'll analyze how media represents and affects different groups, and consider what meaningful change could look like.
JCOM 302 Communication Law 4 credits
Understand the legal framework media professionals work within. You'll cover freedom of expression, access to public records, libel, privacy, copyright, advertising regulation, and more.
JCOM 303 Media Ethics 4 credits
Work through the hard calls media professionals face. You'll examine ethical questions around privacy, truth-telling, objectivity, accountability, and the public interest, and the codes that guide them.
JCOM 305 Media History 4 credits
Trace the changing structure and character of media in the United States.
JCOM 306 Global Communications 4 credits
Examine media and information systems across national and cultural lines, including global news flows and communication policy.
JCOM 314 Understanding Disney (titles vary) 4 credits
Examine the Walt Disney Company and its products through multiple lenses, from the company's history and political economy to textual analysis of Disney media and the range of audience responses to it.
JCOM 315 Indigenous Media (titles vary) 4 credits
Explore the diverse forms of communication used by Indigenous societies, with attention to the deep cultural connections between these communities and their territories.
JCOM 316 Black American Media 4 credits
Survey the history of Black Americans in media production, representation, and reception since the late 19th century, analyzing newspapers, magazines, film, television, and music.
JCOM 317 Media and Religion 4 credits
Examine how media technologies shape religion in the modern world, drawing on foundational thinkers to explore religion's role in politics and culture and to question the theory that religious influence is declining.
JCOM 318 Documenting International Human Rights 4 credits
Study the documentary films that have shaped our understanding of human rights, examining how the form can reveal both atrocity and progress, and how it can tell the truth or distort it.
JCOM 319 Documenting Civil Rights 4 credits
Investigate the American Civil Rights struggle through documentary cinema, examining how documentary film both tells these stories and intervenes in the movements and lives it depicts.
JCOM 411M US Film Industry 4 credits
Trace the past and present of the U.S. film industry, from the rise and restructuring of the major studios to Hollywood's relationship with television and the internet. Cross-listed with cinema studies.
JCOM 412 Internet Law and Regulation 4 credits
Survey the laws and policies governing online communication and commerce, including free speech, privacy and surveillance, electronic contracts, copyright, trademarks, and computer crime.
JCOM 413 Data, Media, Surveillance 4 credits
Explore the intersections of data, media, and surveillance in society through discussion and projects, developing tools to analyze commercial and government data practices and media platforms.
JCOM 414 Media Technologies and Structures 4 credits
Examine how emerging technologies and contemporary media produce new forms of social organization and cultural production, and how media infrastructures shape discourse and public life. (Topics vary.)
JCOM 415 Culture, Power, Media 4 credits
Explore culture, identity, and power, including the role media play in reinforcing social, political, and economic disparities. (Topics vary.)
JCOM 416 Black American Television 4 credits
Examine the conditions that have shaped Black Americans' presence on U.S. television, on-screen and behind the scenes, from the 1950s to the present, using an intersectional framework.
JCOM 417 Cross Cultural Monster Narratives 4 credits
Explore monster archetypes across cultures, examining how monster stories are embraced, remixed, and subverted, with attention to race, gender, sex, and power.
JCOM 418 Global Television 4 credits
Analyze television from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East to understand how social and political conditions shape popular culture around the world.
JCOM 419 Reality Television 4 credits
Use the reality television genre as a lens to explore key issues in contemporary culture and society.
JCOM 424 Latin American Cinema 4 credits
Explore the cinema of Latin America, from Golden Age films and Brazilian Cinema Novo through the militant film era to contemporary work made for global distribution.