Teaching
I teach a wide variety of courses and types of students. These include large, lecture-style introductory courses with nearly 200 students, small Ph.D. seminars focused on histories and theories of digital media, and introductory courses for professional M.A. students. Since coming to the University of Oregon in 2016, I have designed and launched several new courses. Among these is J213 Fact or Fiction, a course about making sense of information in the digital age. The class began as an experiment in teaching a combination of media literacy and math/stats/data literacy, and has since been adopted as a required course for all majors in our program. The course builds a framework through which students can explore a number of key contemporary issues: disinformation, propaganda, fact-checking, numeracy, and much more.
I have three goals in my teaching: (1) To bring passion to all that I do as a teacher, such that students may develop a similar passion for the subject at hand and for lifelong learning (2) to make active learning the cornerstone of my teaching, such that students may have ample space to clarify, question, and apply; and (3) to measure, evaluate, and modify my teaching, such that students may expect instruction that is consistent with current pedagogy, and is improved based on peer feedback and self-reflection.
Courses
Fact or Fiction (J213)
Course Description: Fact or Fiction is a course about making sense of what’s true in the digital age. In a supposedly “post-truth” moment, how can media creators and consumers alike evaluate information to determine what’s credible? More broadly, what are the forces and factors that shape how we come to understand what’s “fake” and what’s “factual” in an increasingly complex media environment? Now more than ever, amid declining trust in professions and institutions, it matters to understand dynamics of trust, verification, misinformation, propaganda, and the social spread of information. This course will focus on two key areas: (1) an explanation of key cases and controversies—from the challenges of junk news and hyperpartisan media to the complicated role of Facebook and other platforms—that shape how people perceive matters of fact, and which are relevant for journalism, public relations, advertising, and other media domains; and (2) an introduction to data literacy and numeracy, or the ability to apply basic numerical and statistical concepts. These two broad areas will be applied in evaluating how media workers—such as journalists and strategic communicators, photographers and documentary filmmakers—develop notions of truth, ethics, and transparency, among other things. In all, our goal is to equip you with a foundation in media literacy and statistical literacy such that you can avoid being duped and help others do the same.
J429 Technology and News
Course Description: The landscape of news and journalism — and the media world more generally — has been transformed in recent years by digital technologies and the practices connected to them: from artificial intelligence and automated-writing bots, to social media and content creators and shifting business models, to the challenges posed by major tech platforms like Google and Meta.
This course aims to help students make sense of many complicated but consequential trends connected to technology, platforms, and social media, with a particular emphasis on what they mean for the changing nature of news — in addition to what they mean for you personally as a future media maker as well as an ongoing media consumer.
This is not, however, a skills class that will teach you to be a more effective influencer, though we will talk about the impact of influencers. Rather, this is a class that teaches you how to think about technology and news. We will study research-based books and articles, industry-focused white papers, and relevant cases that help us better understand the key problems and possibilities associated with technology and news.
The goal is to arm you with concepts — with tools for thinking — that will help you analyze and critique this media moment as well as prepare yourself for a more meaningful “media life” in a tech-saturated environment.
History and Theory of New Media (J610)
Course Description: Change connected to media technologies, it seems, is everywhere. Media industries, institutions, and identities are in flux amid continuous renovation of information technologies, work practices, distribution mechanisms, and audiences/users—not to mention ongoing changes in the larger social, cultural, political, economic, and regulatory contexts for media and communication. How are we, as scholars, to make sense of digital technologies and their implications for media and public life?
The purpose of this class is to introduce graduate students to important theories, concepts, questions, and histories for making sense of emerging media, particularly but not exclusively in our present digital era. Drawing on a two-part focus that combines new media history with key concepts and theories being applied to studies of digital media technologies, our aim is to develop new research in this area, whether in the form of conceptual essays or through research methods that may be qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, computational, humanistic, or otherwise in nature.
In a single term, it is impossible to exhaustively cover the “new media and society” terrain, which encompasses many approaches, concepts, and epistemologies. Instead, think of this course as a cabinet of curiosities—a vital entry point for understanding the beautiful variety in these fields of study and the seemingly infinite possibilities for future research. Thus, we will explore select research domains that provide a sufficient lay of the land and point you to paths yet to explore, altogether drawing on an interdisciplinary lens that acknowledges the contributions of post-positivist (quantitative) and sociocultural (qualitative) perspectives alike, in addition to important ideas from the humanities and elsewhere beyond the social sciences. Overall, greater emphasis in this course is given to a sociological (or sociotechnical) study of media, which means examining the social (or sociomaterial) influences that shape media and their meaning. We’ll use this principal vantage point to scrutinize developments at different levels of analysis (e.g., from individual to institutional) and across different aspects of media production, distribution, and consumption (and recirculation).
Syllabus for J610 History and Theory of New Media for Winter 2023
Mass Communication and Society (J611)
Course Description: The purpose of this course is to help graduate students studying strategic communication and journalism to understand in greater depth the media system in which they will be operating, and to help them think critically about how media systems can support or undermine democratic society.
The subject of “mass communication and society” is broad and complex. What counts as “mass communication” in today’s world of personalized, mobile, ever-shifting streams of information, entertainment, and strategic messaging that people can construct for themselves? To compound the challenge, we need to credibly cover “mass communication and society” in 10 weeks—and “we” are composed of two rather different kinds of students: some in the Journalism program and others in the Brand Responsibility program. Both groups want to hone their thinking and skills as journalists and communicators, but may come at this material from different perspectives.
This syllabus centers around the particular moment we find ourselves in—as scholars, practitioners, and citizens (broadly defined). I’ve combined a few high-level academic studies with journalistic works, public lectures, and other materials that explore the dynamics of media and information in contemporary society. In this moment of profound disruption of traditional media, what do we know about how people are using and responding to media? How do media potentially empower people, and disempower them? Who gets to ‘speak’? Whose stories get told? Has the media system evolved in ways that will fundamentally undermine democracy? How can communicators do their work within this complex media system in ways that help us grapple with urgent community, national, and global problems?
This course will be conversational but also rigorous, grounded in the week’s readings, lectures, and other materials. My goal is that you will carry what you learn here into your future practice—and that this class will help you become a sharper, deeper thinker and thus a more savvy communicator, as well as a more thoughtful and engaged citizen and consumer.
Syllabus for J611 Mass Communication and Society for Fall 2022