COMMUNICATION 3.0

I’m not crying, I promise. There’s no crying in teaching communication. 

Today we’re going to connect the dots between the units we’ve covered in previous weeks, which can seem fairly disparate. How do we make those connections, make sense of them, and make decisions that prepare us for our lives and possible future careers? 

Then we’re going to talk about tomorrow’s presentations. I’d like to hear the specific topic that you’re going to be presenting on so that I can provide feedback. Remember that you’re making a single, well-reasoned and well-researched prediction about how technology will impact one of the fields we’ve studied, and that you have 5 minutes to make it. 

I’ll also announce the winner of yesterday’s PR team vote, and you’ll fill out course evaluations. We’re probably gonna have some time remaining, but we’ll take it up by giving you some time to work on your presentations. 

Today, we’re talking about the theories and practices of PR, and I’ll be countering some misconceptions about public relations, including the idea that PR is as easy as being able to talk really well. 

Well, yes, Elle Woods, it’s harder than it looks.

We’re gonna go over the various kinds of PR and the reasons why PR is important not just in times of crisis. We’re also going to go over the six steps of PR issues management. And then we’re gonna practice them in the second half of class in agencies of our own. 

Today we’re going to be talking about storytelling and journalism, two things that go hand in hand but are perhaps more complicated in practice. Many issues facing journalism today are also about ethics and responsibility. They’re difficult questions, but I’m interested in your answers. Bring your thinking caps. 

We also have a special guest today! Jenni Whalen is a veteran freelance journalist and former managing editor of MedTech Boston, a medical technology news startup site. She’s currently Executive Assistant of Editorial at Upworthy, which is in the midst of refocusing itself on reported and edited content. Jenni has great insights into what journalists do now and where journalism might be headed in the future.

Participatory culture is a set of ideas about a more inclusive vision of cultural production, one that isn’t characterized by divisions between official and unofficial, author and fan, and other such binary categories. This idea is at once familiar and strange, for reasons we’ll be discussing in detail. What does it mean to participate in culture? How can we characterize this participation? That and more will be discussed today.

Television scholar Amanda Lotz has noted that the word “television” seems to endure for a host of different kinds of content, even as the original delivery system called television is thought to be archaic, outmoded, and on the decline. With that in mind, I want to concentrate on your experiences of what television is, what value television has in your life, and how you make viewing decisions in age where the amount of available video content has exponentially increased.

I’ll be giving just a few background details on how scholars and critics think about television systems, how television developed in America, and where we’re at in the industry now. Then we’ll have a free-flowing conversation about your experiences of television.

We’re talking movies/film/cinema today – yes, those terms are essentially interchangeable, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. I’ll be giving you a rundown of the 6 most major industrial moments in the history of the film industry, as well as talking about where the industry is now. Then we’ll discuss ways of thinking about film as art, and how film has been legitimated as an artistic form.

Today we’ll be talking about a major component of communication, and mediated communication specifically – the image. We’ll discuss various ways of analyzing the visual, why images are so powerful, and why images are a dominant mode of communication today.

Ok, Bob Ross.

We’ll also be reading Jason Eppink’s “A Brief History of the GIF (So Far),” which can be downloaded here. The interaction of the visual components with the text is of interest, but the article also provides important background for today’s assignment. 

For today, please reblog one of the GIFs posted below (they’re tagged #BUSC3 T1 and #GIFassignment) and provide <300 words of commentary. This commentary should be rooted in the terms we discussed in class. What signs make up the GIF? How do those signs combine to make meaning? Consider that GIFs are pieces of one media artifact, edited into a particular form, and utilized in a completely different context. Make sure to tag the post with #BUSC3 T1 and #GIFassignment.

This is a day full of introductions. First, we’ll be introducing ourselves to each other – me to you, you to me and your classmates. And it’ll be exactly as charming and not at all awkward as Anna Kendrick in this GIF.

Then we’ll launch into the first of two days of introductory material on communication. Today, we’ll discuss what communication is, who communicates and why, and deal with some terminology that we’ll be able to use in the next two weeks. 

Finally, I’ll introduce one theory of human communication: Kenneth Burke’s “Definition of Man.” You can download it using this link. We’ll be breaking it down in class, so don’t worry if it seems somewhat intimidating and obtuse. 

Your assignment for today is two-fold: First, build a Tumblr account for the course. If you already have a Tumblr, you may want to register a different email address and build one exclusively for the course. Feel free to customize it how you want and use it to connect with classmates and the Tumblr community writ large. Make sure you’re following the course blog with that Tumblr account.