A survey of foundational critical approaches to media studies, which introduces students to transnational and intersectional perspectives on three core themes in Media Studies: arts, society, and institutions.

Introduces students to ethical issues in media. Students learn theoretical aspects of ethics and apply them to media industries and practices in the context of advertising, public relations, journalism, mass media entertainment, and online culture.

An introduction to diverse forms and genres of writing in Media Studies, such as blog entries, Twitter essays, other forms of social media, critical analyses of media texts, histories, and cultures, and more. Through engagement with published examples, students will identify various conventions and styles in Media Studies writing and develop and strengthen their own writing and editing skills.

This course surveys the history of media and communication from the development of writing through the printing press, newspaper, telegraph, radio, film, television and internet. Students examine the complex interplay among changing media technologies and cultural, political and social changes, from the rise of a public sphere to the development of highly-mediated forms of self identity.

Visual Culture studies the construction of the visual in art, media, technology and everyday life. Students learn the tools of visual analysis; investigate how visual depictions such as YouTube and advertising structure and convey ideologies; and study the institutional, economic, political, social, and market factors in the making of contemporary visual culture.

The course presents an overview of media studies in the Global South, discussing the complexity of 'Global South' notion. It explores media theory towards de-westernization and decolonizing studies. Research examples drawn from several contexts.

What makes humans humans, animals animals, and machines machines? This course probes the leaky boundaries between these categories through an examination of various media drawn from science fiction, contemporary art, film, TV, and the critical work of media and posthumanist theorists on cyborgs, genetically-modified organisms, and other hybrid creatures.

This course centres Indigenous critical perspectives on media studies to challenge the colonial foundations of the field. Through examination of Indigenous creative expression and critique, students will analyze exploitative approaches, reexamine relationships to land, and reorient connections with digital spaces to reimagine Indigenous digital world-making.

An exploration of critical approaches to the study of popular culture that surveys diverse forms and genres, including television, social media, film, photography, and more. Students will learn key concepts and theories with a focus on the significance of processes of production, representation, and consumption in mediating power relations and in shaping identity and community in local, national, and global contexts.

This course offers an introduction to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as it contributes to the field of media studies. We will explore STS approaches to media technologies, the materiality of communication networks, media ecologies, boundary objects and more. This will ask students to consider the relationship between things like underground cables and colonialism, resource extraction (minerals for media technologies) and economic exploitation, plants and border violences, Artificial Intelligence and policing.

This course introduces students to perspectives and frameworks to critically analyze complex media-society relations. How do we understand media in its textual, cultural technological, institutional forms as embedded in and shaped by various societal forces? How do modern media and communication technologies impact the ways in which societies are organized and social interactions take place? To engage with these questions, we will be closely studying contemporary media texts, practices and phenomena while drawing upon insights from various disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, art history and visual culture, and cultural studies.

This course offers an introduction to the major topics, debates and issues in contemporary Feminist Media Studies – from digital coding and algorithms to film, television, music and social networks – as they interact with changing experiences, expressions and possibilities for gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity and economic power in their social and cultural contexts. We will explore questions such as: how do we study and understand representations of gender, race and sexuality in various media? Can algorithms reproduce or interrupt racism and sexism? What roles can media play in challenging racial, gendered, sexual and economic violence? How can media technologies normalize or transform relations of oppression and exploitation in specific social and cultural contexts?

Media not only represents war; it has also been deployed to advance the ends of war, and as part of antiwar struggles. This course critically examines the complex relationship between media and war, with focus on historicizing this relationship in transnational contexts.

Around the world, youth is understood as liminal phase in our lives. This course examines how language and new media technologies mark the lives of youth today. We consider social media, smartphones, images, romance, youth activism and the question of technological determinism. Examples drawn from a variety of contexts.
Same as ANTB35H3, (MDSB09H3)

This course introduces students to the key terms and concepts in new media studies as well as approaches to new media criticism. Students examine the myriad ways that new media contribute to an ongoing reformulation of the dynamics of contemporary society, including changing concepts of community, communication, identity, privacy, property, and the political.

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary and transnational field of media studies that helps us to understand the ways that social media and digital culture have impacted social, cultural, political, economic and ecological relations. Students will be introduced to Social Media and Digital Cultural studies of social movements, disinformation, changing labour conditions, algorithms, data, platform design, environmental impacts and more

This course follows the money in the media industries. It introduces a variety of economic theories, histories, and methods to analyse the organization of media and communication companies. These approaches are used to better understand the critical political economy of media creation, distribution, marketing and monetization.

This course examines the role of technological and cultural networks in mediating and facilitating the social, economic, and political processes of globalization. Key themes include imperialism, militarization, global political economy, activism, and emerging media technologies. Particular attention is paid to cultures of media production and reception outside of North America.

Same as GASB05H3

This course introduces students to the study of advertising as social communication and provides a historical perspective on advertising's role in the emergence and perpetuation of "consumer culture". The course examines the strategies employed to promote the circulation of goods as well as the impact of advertising on the creation of new habits and expectations in everyday life.

This course provides an overview of various segments of the media industries, including music, film, television, social media entertainment, games, and digital advertising. Each segment’s history, business models, and labour practices will be examined taking a comparative media approach.

The course explores the different types of platform labour around the world, including micro-work, gig work and social media platforms. It presents aspects of the platformization of labour, as algorithmic management, datafication, work conditions and platform infrastructures. The course also emphasizes workers' organization, platform cooperativism and platform prototypes.

A seminar that explores historical and contemporary movements and issues in media art as well as creation-based research methods that integrate media studies inquiry and analysis through artistic and media-making practice and experimentation.

This course examines the history, organization and social role of a range of independent, progressive, and oppositional media practices. It emphasizes the ways alternative media practices, including the digital, are the product of and contribute to political movements and perspectives that challenge the status quo of mainstream consumerist ideologies.

This course builds on a foundation in Feminist Media Studies to engage the scholarly field of Trans-Feminist Queer (TFQ) Media Studies. While these three terms (trans, feminist and queer) can bring us to three separate areas of media studies, this course immerses students in scholarship on media and technology that is shaped by and committed to their shared critical, theoretical and political priorities. This scholarship centers transgender, feminist and queer knowledges and experiences to both understand and reimagine the ways that media and communication technologies contribute to racial, national, ethnic, gender, sexual and economic relations of power and possibility.

This course explores the importance of sound and sound technology to visual media practices by considering how visuality in cinema, video, television, gaming, and new media art is organized and supported by aural techniques such as music, voice, architecture, and sound effects.

This course introduces students to media industries and commercial popular cultural forms in East Asia. Topics include reality TV, TV dramas, anime and manga, as well as issues such as regional cultural flows, global impact of Asian popular culture, and the localization of global media in East Asia.
Same as GASC41H3, (MDSC41H3)

This seminar provides students with a theoretical toolkit to understand, analyze and evaluate media-society relations in the contemporary world. Students will, through reading and writing, become familiar with social theories that intersect with questions and issues related to media production, distribution and consumption. These theories range from historical materialism, culturalism, new materialism, network society, public sphere, feminist and queer studies, critical race theory, disability media theories, and so on. Special attention is paid to the mutually constitutive relations between digital media and contemporary societies and cultures.

Anthropology studies language and media in ways that show the impact of cultural context. This course introduces this approach and also considers the role of language and media with respect to intersecting themes: ritual, religion, gender, race/ethnicity, power, nationalism, and globalization. Class assignments deal with lectures, readings, and students' examples.
Same as ANTC59H3

This course focuses on modern-day scandals, ranging from scandals of politicians, corporate CEOs, and celebrities to scandals involving ordinary people. It examines scandals as conditioned by technological, social, cultural, political, and economic forces and as a site where meanings of deviances of all sorts are negotiated and constructed. It also pays close attention to media and journalistic practices at the core of scandals.