Communication (COMM)

COMM 1101 - Introduction to Communication (4 Credits)  
This course will provide an introduction to the study of Communication. Topics include the functions, foundations, models, and modes of communication. Students will be introduced to research methods and begin to master the research and study skills required to be a successful scholar of communication. An overview of concepts and processes related to the functions of communication will be examined through current theoretical and empirical research.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to express a thoughtful awareness of the role of communication in their own life.
  • Students will be able to identify how communication processes shape human thoughts and actions.
  • Students will be able to articulate the difference in how evidence is used in various social-scientific approaches to understanding communication phenomena.
  • Students will be able to demonstrate an evidence-based perspective on the structures, processes, and effects of communication.
  • Students will be able to identify and apply theoretical perspectives to understand and ask communication-related research questions.
  • Students will be able to evaluate the strengths and limitations of communication theories.
  • Students will be able to find, summarize, and synthesize quality communication research publications.
  • Students will be able to identify gaps in what is known about human communication.
  • Students will be able to begin to critically evaluate how inferences are made from observations.
  • Students will be able to critique inappropriate citation and methodological choices, formulate a high quality APA style research paper investigating a specific communication phenomenon in depth from a unique perspective.
  
COMM 1105 - FWS: Action or Despair? Media Representations of Climate (3 Credits)  
How we think about the climate crisis is shaped by the stories that various media tell us about our relationship with nature. From films such as The Day After Tomorrow and Elizabeth Kolbert's book Field Notes From a Catastrophe to Banksy's street art and news reports, we are presented with a vision of the future filled with despair and hopelessness. Do such messages work to raise awareness and drive change, or do they instill a sense of fatalism that prevents us from taking meaningful action? In this course we will think and write about how climate change is conceptualized and communicated in a range of assignments including critical interpretation of texts, a comparative analysis paper, a book or film review and a researched argument essay.
Distribution Requirements: (WRT-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024  
COMM 1106 - FWS: Manufacturing Need: Writing About the Power of Advertising (3 Credits)  
From Dove soap ads to Budweiser's famous Super Bowl commercials, companies vie for our attention in order to persuade us to buy their products. But what exactly are they selling us? This course will explore the ways in which print and video advertisements craft stories that capitalize on our best intentions and deepest anxieties. By identifying design elements such as use of color, lighting, spatial arrangement, music, and dialogue, students will assess and critique how visual ads make persuasive arguments that often work against our better judgment. We will then consider ads that harness this power to deliver positive messages through PSAs and advocacy advertising. Assignments will include rhetorical and critical analysis papers, creative briefs for a mock marketing campaign, and a video essay.
Distribution Requirements: (WRT-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024  
COMM 1107 - FWS: Object Lessons: Communication and Materiality (3 Credits)  
While we live in a world that produces material goods at an overwhelming rate, one thing that has not changed throughout history is the complexity of human relationship to the material world. In our increasingly consumerist and digitized culture we still assign value beyond the immediate function of objects, an act that plays a crucial role in constituting memory, identity, and in our understanding of the past, present, and future. In this course students will write about the ways objects communicate meaning, conduct research into the cultural, political, and economic contexts surrounding material artifacts, and across several essays and a group project explore the ways objects both small and large can impact the way we think about ourselves and our world.
Learning Outcomes:
  • To analyze written and visual texts with a focus on evidence-based interpretation.
  • To write academic essays with a clear thesis, complex argument, and logical structure.
  • To compose writing that critically engages with the subject matter of the course and demonstrates correct use of style, grammar, and reference methods.
  • To incorporate independent research creatively and strategically into your own writing.
  • To practice preparatory writing strategies such as drafting, revising, and peer review, culminating in original essays or presentations.
  
COMM 1111 - Navigating the Communication Major and Beyond (1 Credit)  
This course introduces the Communication major and focuses on transitioning to college life, developing your academic identity, and making meaning of your college experience. You will develop a learning community, identify your support network, and explore what Cornell offers to you as a first-year Communication student. Course content will promote the development of skills for balancing academic success with extracurricular and interpersonal activities during your time in the major.
Enrollment Information: Required for and limited to: first-year Communication majors.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe what you can learn and experience in your major and explore possible career paths associated with the Communication Major.
  • Identify your academic goals and the opportunities, resources, and services that are available to help you meet these goals.
  • Identify and acknowledge your social identity, cultural rules and biases, and the inherent value of being open to diverse perspectives.
  • Develop a learning community and a support network.
  • Engage in self-reflection about how you think and learn, how you interact with others, and how you respond to new information.
  
COMM 1300 - Visual Communication (3 Credits)  
Introduction to visual communication theory. Examines how visual images influence our attention, perspectives, and understanding. Constructs a visual analytic language for becoming visually aware and for thinking critically about how visual images influence us. Applies this language to visual artifacts such as photos, maps, comics, and graphs and considers how we communicate visually in various contexts (e.g., with our bodies, in scenes of strong emotion, and in human-built environments).
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Master the visual analytical language of images.
  • Critically engage with concepts and theories of visual perception and communication.
  • Apply the visual analytical language of images to analyze, critique, evaluate, and create new visual artifacts.
  • Describe the social, cultural, and environmental factors that shape perception and that cause different people to gain different messages from the same visual artifacts.
  • Recognize how the creators of visual images employ rhetoric and persuasion to guide viewers to desired perceptions.
  • Identify when visual artifacts such as photos, maps, and graphs convey misleading, incorrect, or biased information.
  • Interpret academic literature in visual communication by honing the ability to read, comprehend, and critically engage with scholarly research.
  
COMM 2010 - Oral Communication (3 Credits)  
The course focuses on face-to-face, public communication, but the principles and practices addressed transfer to all purposeful communication situations. While many assume a good speech rests in how well it is delivered, students will learn that a good speech is equally dependent on the development, structure, and integrity of one's ideas. The objectives of the course are for students to speak effectively and ethically, and listen critically.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment preference given to: communication majors and minors, CALS seniors, and CALS juniors.  
Distribution Requirements: (ORL-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to use rhetorical strategies toward specific purposes in making oral presentations for different audiences.
  • Students will be able to practice a style of oral delivery that is attentive to audience engagement and rhetorical situations.
  • Students will be able to demonstrate and practice an understanding of the broader ethical dimensions in oral communication emphasizing accountability and attention to diverse voices.
  • Students will be able to Listen, reflect, and evaluate oral communication processes, practices and events.
  
COMM 2200 - Media Communication (3 Credits)  
Introduction to media history, industry, content, policy, process, and effects.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to identify the policies and institutions that impact the content, structure and distribution of media products.
  • Students will be able to describe the economic and structural operations of the media industry.
  • Students will be able to explain various kinds of processes and effects of media on individuals, groups, and society.
  • Students will be able to apply a theory of media effects to a media message or organization.
  
COMM 2310 - Writing About Communication (3 Credits)  
America's employers consistently rank the ability to communicate as one of the most important career skills for hiring and advancement. This course will strengthen your ability to craft effective written communication for a variety of formats, providing you with a skill set that is applicable in professional and academic settings. Assignments explore social science and communication concepts.
Prerequisites: COMM 1101 and 3 credits of college-level writing courses; summer only: grade of B or better in a 3-credit college writing course.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Communication majors. All majors allowed for summer enrollment.  
Distribution Requirements: (WRT-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to build skills in a series of tasks critical to high-quality writing; finding, evaluating, analyzing, synthesizing and prioritizing complex material.
  • Students will be able to master the individual components of the writing process; composing, editing, and revising.
  • Students will be able to translate social science and communication theories and concepts for academic and public audiences.
  • Students will be able to maintain the fundamentals of effective writing while adapting style, tone and content to fit a variety of formats and audiences.
  
COMM 2450 - Communication and Technology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 2450  
Introduces students to the Communication and Information Technologies focus area of the communication department and the Human Systems track for information science. It examines several approaches to understanding technology and its role in human behavior and society. Topics include psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication; how design plays a role in the way we interface with technology and collaborate with each other; and the ways in which communication technology is situated inside social and institutional structures and cultural formations.
Distribution Requirements: (ETM-AS), (KCM-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to evaluate (both existing and hypothetical) communication technologies using principles of user-centered design.
  • Students will be able to anticipate consequences of communication technology (both existing and hypothetical) on individual behavior and personal well-being.
  • Students will be able to anticipate consequences of communication technology (both existing and hypothetical) on collective behavior and effectiveness.
  
COMM 2760 - Persuasion and Social Influence (3 Credits)  
Social influence and persuasion are the most basic and important functions of communication. The course covers characteristics of persuasive messages, message sources, and targets; interpersonal influence; and influence in groups. Special emphasis is given to topics in health, science, risk. This course features interactive lectures, assignments that apply principles of persuasion to real world contexts, and an applied group research project. Exams, homework assignments, and the group research project comprise the bulk of student evaluation.
Enrollment Information: Not open to: graduate students.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to explain basic theories of persuasion and social influence.
  • Students will be able to apply theories of persuasion and social influence in a variety of real world settings.
  • Students will be able to develop abilities to critically process persuasive messages and make informed decisions in everyday life.
  • Students will be able to practice teamwork skills.
  • Students will be able to plan and design persuasive messages.
  
COMM 2820 - Research Methods in Communication Studies (4 Credits)  
Covers social scientific methods to solve communication research problems empirically. Topics include basic principles of social scientific research, random sampling, questionnaire design, experimental research design, focus group techniques, content analysis, and basic descriptive and inferential statistics. Students also learn basic data manipulation, presentation, and analysis techniques using SPSS and EXCEL.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomores or higher.  
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Summer 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Have an appreciation for how we do research in the field of communication and why it is important to understand research methods.
  • Utilize a variety of communication databases to identify scholarly research related to a research topic of interest.
  • Understand key concepts and vocabulary used to describe various research paradigms and designs.
  • Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of communication research designs that utilize in-depth interviews, content analysis, surveys, and experiments.
  • Apply knowledge and skills learned about content analysis to design a codebook to analyze newspaper coverage.
  • Apply knowledge and skills learned about surveys to design an original questionnaire about media use and a sampling strategy.
  • Analyze numerical data using descriptive and inferential statistics in EXCEL and SPSS.
  • Convey statistical information through graphs, charts, and figures using EXCEL and SPSS.
  
COMM 2850 - Communication, Environment, Science, and Health (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with STS 2851  
Environmental problems, public health issues, scientific research-in each of these areas, communication plays a fundamental role. From the media to individual conversations, from technical journals to textbooks, from lab notes to the web, communication helps define scientifically based social issues and research findings. This course examines the institutional and intellectual contexts, processes, and practical constraints on communication in the sciences.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Summer 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to identify the role and opportunities of communication in science, environment, and health.
  • Students will be able to recognize the institutional and practical constraints on communication in science, environment, and health.
  • Students will be able to compare and contrast science, environmental, and health communication theories to general communication, science and technology studies, sociology, and psychology.
  • Students will be able to demonstrate application of communication theories.
  
COMM 2990 - Directed Research Experience (1-3 Credits)  
Intended for first-year and sophomore students who are new to undergraduate research. Students may be reading scientific literature, learning research techniques, or assisting with ongoing research. The faculty supervisor determines the work goals and the form of the final report.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-UG)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
COMM 3010 - Writing and Producing the Narrative for Digital Media (3 Credits)  
New media communication has been blurring the traditional roles of content creator and consumer. Professional communicators-such as journalists, screenwriters, advertising executives, documentarians, and podcasters-are now expected to know how to use alternative storytelling forms to reach their audiences. They need to know how to gather information through a variety of sources such as crowdsurfing and social media; quickly and efficiently write, edit, and record audio and video. This course will explore these new delivery systems and provide guided practice of emerging communication forms. Fundamentally, this course is about writing-concisely and accurately with a clear and active voice-for new digital media with a focus on the personal narrative.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomores or above.  
Distribution Requirements: (WRT-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to write, edit and produce both personal narratives and community based research topics in essay, podcast and short video documentary formats.
  • Students will be able to collaborate, and share written and produced content with the class in the form of audio/visual and oral presentations.
  • Students will be able to express their diverse perspectives.
  
COMM 3020 - Science Writing for the Media (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with STS 3020  
How to write about science, technology, and medicine for the media. Writing assignments focus on writing news for web sites, blogs, magazines, and other media.
Prerequisites: completion at least one college-level writing course.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomores or higher.  
Distribution Requirements: (SSC-AS), (WRT-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to define science news.
  • Students will be able to identify audiences for science news and target your writing to them.
  • Students will be able to write basic science news stories.
  • Students will be able to report and write science feature stories.
  • Students will be able to explain key constraints on and opportunities for science journalism, including changes in science journalism as it adapts to a new media world.
  • Students will be able to investigate current topics of concern to the science journalism community.
  • Students will be able to discuss the social context in which science journalism operates.
  
COMM 3030 - Research Writing Seminar in Communication (3 Credits)  
Academics are in the business of creating knowledge. The way that academics in the social sciences typically share the knowledge that we create-the way that most often earns us credit in our universities and among our professional community-is through our writing. In the field of communication, specifically, our writing typically takes the form of journal articles, which may be preceded by conference versions of our papers. At times, we also write book chapters, books, and book reviews; increasingly, scholars in our field may turn to other avenues of knowledge dissemination, including lay articles, blogs, social media, and the like (see Boczkowski & Delli Carpini (2020) for a rundown.
Distribution Requirements: (WRT-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Pose a research question and articulate its relevance.
  • Situate your project clearly within existing research on your topic, showing a contribution.
  • Construct parts of a paper that can do well their specific work.
  • Provide, receive, and revise in response to constructive criticism and peer feedback.
  • Use appropriate citation practices and adhere to the norms of academic writing style.
  • Present research findings through a variety of academic genres to specialists and non-specialists.
  
COMM 3040 - Writing and Editing for Magazines and Online Media (3 Credits)  
Introduction to magazine and online journalism, and how magazines and websites fit into the current media landscape. Through analytical and practical study of publications and the editorial process, students will gain a basic understanding of the range of writing and editing techniques required to be successful in the field.
Prerequisites: COMM 2310.  
Distribution Requirements: (WRT-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Summer 2014  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify differences between hard news stories and feature stories. Develop effective observation and storytelling techniques.
  • Conduct original research and interviews as part of story development. Produce articles for specific target audiences that follow the stylistic and structural conventions of magazine writing genres.
  • Practice a range of story organization, structure, and presentation methods for both print and online publication.
  • Edit and revise written work based on peer and instructor feedback to improve clarity and coherence.
  
COMM 3050 - Advanced Media Writing about Cultural, Social, and Environmental Crises (3 Credits)  
This advance writing course will tackle today's top cultural issues, such as climate change, social justice, social media, political extremism and others, with the ultimate goal of student publication. Students will first research a media market of their choice, preferably their home market, and then create compelling media content for identified local or regional media outlets. The media content will focus on the local or regional impacts of national or global cultural crises to highlight the impact on communities. A hoped-for, but not required, outcome of the course is for students to get one piece published in their target market. Students must have strong writing skills, be self-disciplined about making deadlines, be proactive and have an interest in publishing. Advanced media writing, op-editorial, and creative non-fiction will be covered.
Prerequisites: an A- or better in COMM 2310 or equivalent course, experience with media writing and/or strong writing skills.  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, WRT-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Hone project-management skills through conception, research, writing, and publication with short deadlines.
  • Conduct effective interviews.
  • Develop proficient editing skills by evaluating and editing their work and others.
  • Apply communication research to create compelling content.
  • Create publishable content in popular media formats for mass-market consumption.
  
COMM 3060 - Connecting Experience: Creating a Personal Brand and Implementing an ePortfolio (3 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018  
COMM 3065 - Sports Communication: Media, Marketing, Crisis and Violence (3 Credits)  
This course will introduce the student to various aspects of the sports-media-audience relationship, including the history of sports and the media, the industries that constitute sports media, the audiences drawn to and affected by sports media, and the social issues that arise from sports media. It will organized around three modules: Industry, Issues & Careers.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2018  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Distinguish between various sports communication professions.
  • Identify pressing issues around professional and amateur sports and how they might affect cultures on the whole.
  • Critically evaluate a wide variety of sports and global sporting events with respect to media coverage.
  • Design a communication plan for a sports media crisis.
  • Propose an advertising plan for sports-related products or services using communication theories. 6. Demonstrate oral communication and interview skills.
  
COMM 3070 - Communicating Today: Creating Strategic Visual Messages Across Media (3 Credits)  
The ability to translate complex issues into compelling messages for public audiences is an important professional skill. In this course, students pick a topic of personal and scholarly interest and create strategic visual communication in several popular formats with integrative media. Students will conduct research throughout the semester to address the specific needs of the different formats. Relevant visual communication theory will be explored and applied. Students learn effective use of visual narrative, images, media writing and basic messaging strategy. Students will practice oral, visual and written communication. Students are encouraged, but not required, to select topics related to science, technology, social science or sustainability issues. Semester topic should be related to the student’s major.
Prerequisites: COMM 2310 or COMM 2010 or permission of instructor.  
Distribution Requirements: (KCM-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop an in-depth understanding of a current policy, science or technology issue', using both primary and secondary sources of information, exploring cultural contexts, and managing projects from beginning to end.
  • Present complex information with clear and compelling written, oral and visual forms of modern communication, utilizing new media and traditional media formats, for general and specific audiences.
  • Demonstrate evidence-based communication techniques through integrating, synthesizing and summarizing qualitative and quantitative information.
  
COMM 3075 - Writing With and About AI (3 Credits)  
In the age of artificial intelligence, the ability to use generative AI tools to assist with content production is quickly becoming an in-demand professional skill. At the same time, there is a valid concern that over-reliance on LLMs in writing hinders critical thinking, problem solving, and genuine intellectual inquiry. This course will help students develop critical AI literacy skills and explore the limitations and affordances of LLMs in writing and content creation. Students will practice integrating AI tools into the composing process in an ethical and transparent way. Through a variety of creative, analytical, and research-based assignments, students will create original work while reflecting on the role of AI in knowledge-making.
Distribution Requirements: (WRT-AG)  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Critically assess ethical issues associated with the use of generative AI tools.
  • Recognize AI as a political technology with built-in algorithmic biases and inequalities.
  • Differentiate between AI-assisted writing vs AI-generated writing.
  • Develop ethical, transparent, and reflective practices of using AI as a tool in research and content production.
  • Practice writing logical, nuanced, evidence-based arguments that center human thought and genuine intellectual engagement with texts and ideas.
  
COMM 3090 - Experiential Writing in Mexico: Cultural and Environmental Communication (3 Credits)  
The natural and cultural experience of 8-10 days in Mexico will serve as the inspiration for compelling written communication in this writing intensive course. Students will master writing for diverse audiences in a variety of common formats, from science communication to popular media. Keys to successful communication include; the ability to grab and maintain the reader's attention while synthesizing complex or controversial material; developing a narrative; and, above all, not distracting the reader with weak writing, lack of clarity, or poor structure. Through readings and field trips, students will explore cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic development issues in a rich and diverse landscape. These experiences will be the basis of the written assignments, augmented by research. Classes while in Mexico are full days with homework overnight.
Course Fee: Course Fee, TBA. Detailed travel expenses and fees will be discussed prior to course enrollment.  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, WRT-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-ITL, CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Winter 2025, Winter 2024, Winter 2019, Winter 2018  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate written communication skills across multiple media.
  • Communicate complex or controversial information.
  • Integrate personal experience and scholarly research for effective writing.
  • Interpret trade-offs between economic development, conservation, and cultural imperatives.
  • Identify key aspects of historical and present-day Mexican culture, including complex socio-economic challenges.
  
COMM 3100 - Communication and Decision Making in Groups (3 Credits)  
Provides students with a greater understanding of information sharing, persuasion, and decision development in small work groups. Through practical exercises, class discussions, and lectures, students learn firsthand how tools such as decision structuring process can affect group performance. The course is taught in an interactive hands-on format that emphasizes application of tested theory. Due to the unique nature of this class, there is a very strict attendance policy.
Prerequisites: COMM 2760.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: juniors or seniors. Priority given to: COMM majors.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain social influence processes in group decision-making.
  • Critically evaluate empirical research on small group decision-making.
  • Synthesize across multiple theories of group communication.
  • Apply group communication theories to multiple real-world settings.
  
COMM 3110 - Educational Psychology (4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with EDUC 3110, HD 3110, GDEV 3110  
Educational psychology is the application of psychological principles and concepts to cases of teaching and learning. We study behavioral, cognitive, embodied, and social-cultural perspectives on learning and thinking, and we use them in planning and reflecting on weekly fieldwork outside the classroom. In the process, we become more mindful and skilled learners ourselves and better facilitators of others' learning. *Both the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 courses will focus on educational psychology as it relates to PreK-Adult learners; however, Fall fieldwork experiences will be with learners across the PreK-Adult spectrum; Spring fieldwork experiences will be with adult learners ONLY.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomores, juniors, and seniors.  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, KCM-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Be able to analyze and improve instructional materials and methods in terms of their ... Appropriateness for a given learning goal Demands on memory Demands on attention Demands on their ability to process the language of instruction Assumptions about the level of intellectual abstraction that learners are capable of Potential to activate learner motivation
  • Be more efficient and effective at reading, summarizing, and asking critical questions about peer-reviewed original research in educational psychology
  • Be more comfortable and skilled at facilitating learning for another person (through questioning, listening, and observing learners at work)
  
COMM 3140 - Political Journalism (4 Credits)  
This course will explore the traditional dynamic and norms of political press coverage in the United States, and the impact of those patterns on both the government and the nation; some of the ways longstanding norms have recently shifted, and continue to shift; the larger historical forces and long-term trends driving those changes; and the theoretical questions, logistical challenges and ethical dilemmas these changes pose for both political journalists and those they cover. The course will equally cover the practice of political reporting, including weekly analysis and discussion of current press coverage, in-class exercises and simulations, readings from academic and journalistic sources, and visits from leading political reporters and former spokespeople able to offer a firsthand perspective on the topics.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-HE)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Summer 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate the ability to think like a journalist, in particular: to understand and interpret the elements of a variety of political reporting, and the editorial decision-making process.
  • Understand, analyze, and contrast how the press and political actors influence each other, and society at large.
  • Compose, evaluate, and assess editorial decisions in real time.
  • Interpret and utilize the basic facts about how various political news beats and platforms operate, including congressional, White House, campaign, investigative, local, print, digital, and television journalism.
  
COMM 3150 - Organizational Communication: Theory and Practice (3 Credits)  
This is a survey course of issues that influence communication in organizations. Topics include formal organizational structure, social networks, information technology, leadership, team dynamics, and cross-culture differences.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to develop basic knowledge about key factors that may influence effectiveness of communication in contemporary organizations.
  • Students will be able to develop critical thinking and analytic abilities through case analysis.
  • Students will be able to develop problem-solving capabilities as students propose and explore solutions to resolve challenging management situations.
  
COMM 3189 - Taking America's Pulse: Creating and Conducting a National Opinion Poll (3-4 Credits)  
Crosslisted with GOVT 3189, PUBPOL 3189  
In this course, students will design, conduct, and analyze a national-level public opinion survey. Students will determine all survey questions based on their research interests. All necessary survey research skills will be learned in the class.
Distribution Requirements: (OPHLS-AG, SBA-AG), (SDS-AS, SSC-AS)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2020, Fall 2016, Spring 2015  
COMM 3190 - Data and Society (3 Credits)  
The purpose of this class is to learn to “see” the work that data does in our modern world. Data and society are fundamentally entangled. In this class, we will pull on the different strands of this entanglement to better understand the role that data plays across a range of distinct contexts. This is a survey course, intended to expose you to a broad array of issues. We will explore the role that data plays in domains as varied as representative democracy, search engines, employment, and genetic sense-making. We will examine how economic and political interests shape what data exists and how those data are used. You will also get to explore the communicative role that data plays in decision-making.
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG)  
COMM 3200 - Technology, Behavior and Society (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 3200  
This course addresses the contemporary socio- technological challenges and debates about digital media and information technologies and their impact on society. It covers a broad spectrum of topics spanning digital technologies, social behaviors, and society. We will critically evaluate research evidence and its relevance to various social contexts and practices, diverse users and uses of social media, ethical and policy implications, trade-offs of potential solutions, and the impact of socio-technological shifts on individuals and communities. Our overarching goal is to challenge commonplace assumptions about these tools and phenomena; and to ask deeper questions about their profound impact on society.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Spring 2025, Summer 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Analyze and critique the complex information society around them.
  • Students will be able describe how the socio-economic and cultural environment is changing with economic environment are changing with the emergence of new media and digital technologies.
  • Students will be able to identify, describe, and speak about pressing contemporary controversies around new media (e.g., privacy,relationships, expertise, content moderation.
  • Students will be able to articulate their perspective on these issues, in relevant digital media formats.
  
COMM 3210 - Communication and the Environment (3 Credits)  
Students investigate how values, attitudes, social structure, and communication affect public perceptions of environmental risk and public opinion about the environment. A primary focus is mass media's impact on public perceptions of the environment, how the media portray the environment, and discussion of the implications of public consumption of environmental content.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG, SCH-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will examine the different ways that communication and the media shaped and continue to shape our understanding of and relationships to the natural environment.
  • Students will gain historical and contemporary knowledge of the US conservation and environmental movements and how environmental attitudes have changed over time.
  • Students will be able to apply communication theory to environmental contexts and will be better able to recognize, analyze, and critique the variety of environmental messages that they encounter.
  
COMM 3250 - Vamos Pa'l Norte: U.S. Migration and Communication (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with LSP 3250  
Migrants are a heterogeneous group of people (the term migrants is used to encompass different immigrant communities). The reasons for relocating to the United States, or another country, the conditions under which they relocate, whether they are authorized to remain in a country, their cultural backgrounds, their ethnic/racial identities, their education level, their gender identity and sexual orientation, and their socio-economic status are merely a few factors that contribute to immigrants' diverse experiences. Thus, this course will introduce us to different frameworks, research, and practices that can help us understand the important role of communication in different, U.S., migration experiences. On the one hand, communication can help mitigate some of the social and structural barriers that migrants face in the United States and elsewhere. On the other hand, communication can also exacerbate or lead to educational, economic, and health inequities among migrants. We will consider both ways in which communication can function for migrant communities. Overall, migration: (1) is a diverse area of research that can incorporate intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, organizational, institutional, cultural, and policy levels of analysis; (2) is studied using a wide range of methodologies; and (3) is affected by a variety of communication channels. The readings and content of this course primarily focus on the experiences of Latina/o/x immigrant communities in the U.S.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, D-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Evaluate the unique position, contributions, and challenges of U.S. immigrants.
  • Compare and contrast the frameworks that can help us understand how inequities are created for immigrants and how immigrants use various communication strategies to mitigate the barriers they experience.
  • Appraise why challenging stereotypical depictions of immigrants in the media is important for an equitable and socially-just society.
  • Assess how different communication messages (e.g., anti-immigrant rhetoric) contributes to the construction of a stigmatizing immigration system.
  • Dissect the strengths and limitations of different scholarly articles, frameworks, research, and practices.
  • Apply key findings and observations from scholarly articles into discourses around migrants' experiences.
  • Determine how migration and communication research and practices can enhance our understanding of immigrants' experiences.
  
COMM 3400 - Global Media Industries (3 Credits)  
In this class, students will learn about entertainment media, media systems, new media and the ways in which they interconnect with globalization, colonialism and imperialism. Here, students will contextualize media across national contexts paying attention to how mass media shapes or is shaped by social, political, religious and economic factors. They will learn how to do critical comparative analyses of entertainment media across nations and from these analyses make projections about how media have and will influence key events intra-nationally and transnationally.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG)  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Comparatively analyze global media systems apply critical thinking skills in conducting research and evaluating information by methods appropriate to the communications professions in which they work.
  • Demonstrate culturally proficient communication that empowers those traditionally disenfranchised in society, especially as grounded in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and ability, domestically and globally, across communication and media contexts.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of the multicultural history and role of professionals and institutions in shaping communications.
  • Utilize skills and knowledge acquired in class to support social change within the context of media and communications.
  
COMM 3450 - Human-Computer Interaction Design (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 3450  
This course focuses on user experience design (UX) and the life cycle of interface design from the user perspective. We will discuss key aspects of the human-centered design process: understanding, analyzing, and formalizing user needs, exploring possible design solutions to address user needs, creating prototypes to externalize design ideas, and evaluating the usability of these prototypes.
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to appraise the human-centered design cycle and human-computer interaction design concepts.
  • Students will be able to build practical skills required to apply the human-centered design process in technology design through class activities and a semester-long project.
  • Students will be able to design a user interface in a semester-long project, including interim milestones that walk the students through the specific stages of the design process.
  • Students will be able to develop teamwork skills through a semester-long group project.
  
COMM 3560 - Computing Cultures (4 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018  
COMM 3710 - Crossing Cultures Through Film (3 Credits)  
The goal of the class is to expose students to cross-cultural differences in a wide range of topics, ranging from ethnicity and race, values, religion, ethics, gender, sexual orientation to behavioral norms. Throughout the semester, students will examine and analyze these issues through a selection of films that offer vivid portrayals of how people from across the world live and work. Through in-class discussion of these films, along with assigned readings, the course aims to help students gain cross-cultural competence in cognition, affect and behavior.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, D-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2018  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate appreciation of the complexity and diversity of culture through films.
  • Identify, distinguish and explain historical, sociological and social psychological factors that may influence differences in values, attitudes and behaviors across cultures.
  • Demonstrate intercultural communication competence in cognition, affect and behavior.
  • Exhibit awareness of self as a part of culture by seeing the impact of students' own cultures on their own attitudes and behaviors, alongside the impact of culture on others' attitudes and behaviors.
  • Practice empathy and openness to differences.
  
COMM 3720 - Intercultural Communication (3 Credits)  
In an ever-globalizing economy it is vital for the next-generation of workforce to develop a global mentality, along with intercultural competence in communication. The course explores the meaning of culture and studies the numerous ways in which culture contributes to our understanding and practice of both verbal and non-verbal interpersonal communication in various communicative contexts. Special attention will be given to management challenges in multinational corporations. The course also explores how the adoption and usage of information and communication technologies can help support and facilitate intercultural communication and collaboration.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, D-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2021, Fall 2019, Spring 2018  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate appreciation of the complexity and diversity of culture.
  • Identify, distinguish and explain historical, sociological and social psychological factors that may influence differences in values, attitudes and behaviors across cultures.
  • Demonstrate intercultural communication competence in cognition, affect and behavior, particularly the cognition dimension.
  • Exhibit awareness of self as a part of culture by seeing the impact of students' own cultures on their own attitudes and behaviors, alongside the impact of culture on others' attitudes and behaviors.
  • Practice empathy and openness to differences.
  
COMM 3730 - Mindful Intercultural Communication (3 Credits)  
In this course, students will read theories and research in positive psychology, mindfulness meditation, and intercultural communication to gain a basic understanding of the emerging science on the effects of mindfulness practices on effectiveness in intercultural communication, as well as mental and physical health. Students will also learn a series of meditative routines, including both basic breathing techniques and more advanced meditative practices that conscientiously cultivate such positive emotions as gratitude, joy, compassion, empathy, equanimity, forgiveness and connectedness of humanity. Through regular and persistent practices, students will grow their attentiveness, compassion, and empathy that are vital for constructive intercultural and interpersonal communication.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to describe and explain how meditation on mindfulness and compassion can affect the quality and effectiveness of interpersonal relationships in various cultural contexts.
  • Students will be able to explain and engage various meditative practices, along with their benefits, intellectually and experientially.
  • Students will be able to apply insights gained from mindful meditation to reduce stress in personal life, to boost the quality of interpersonal communication with classmates and other members of the Cornell community, and to achieve higher effectiveness in intercultural communication.
  
COMM 3760 - Planning Communication Campaigns (3 Credits)  
Provides a theoretical and practical overview of the audiences, messages, and evaluation of communication campaigns. The course considers common methods of data collection (e.g. in-depth interviews, surveys) and analysis of campaign-related data sources. Specific topics include: (1) campaign goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics; (2) research design and implementation; (3) audience segmentation; (4) message construction; and (5) techniques of evaluation.
Prerequisites: Prerequisite or corequisite: COMM 2820 or equivalent research methods course, and a course in basic statistics.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-CEL)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to identify key principles involved with the design, implementation and evaluation of public communication campaigns.
  • Students will be able to evaluate existing communication campaigns based on criteria learned throughout the course.
  • Students will be able to apply a variety of research methodologies, including unobtrusive observation, in-depth interviews and/or surveys, to inform an original communication campaign proposal.
  • Students will be able to apply communication theory to justify and develop campaign messages that are likely to be effective in reaching campaign objectives among targeted audiences.
  
COMM 3800 - Television in the Digital Age (3 Credits)  
What is television? Drawing on key concepts in the field of television studies, this class will critically appraise the medium of television in our contemporary digital context. We will look at transformations in television production, genres, and audiences in response to new technologies and economies. By the end of the class, we will decide whether television is still a meaningful term and, if so, how its meanings must expand to account for our changing televisual practices. By the end of the course, you will have deepened your understanding of television and its relation to contemporary culture as well as developed a scholarly understanding of some key ideas that have structured television studies since its emergence as a field of study in the mid-1970s.
Prerequisites: COMM 2200.  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, HA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Recognize the role of digital technologies in changing television environments.
  • Evaluate the impacts of technological, economic, industrial, and cultural transformations in television on programming content.
  • Apply contemporary critiques of television industries to ongoing transformations in the production and reception of programming.
  • Consider the meaning of television in a multiple-platform distribution model.
  • Create a television show pitch and pilot script that demonstrate an understanding of contemporary television production, distribution, financing, genre, and audience.
  
COMM 4010 - Trust and Safety in Online Platforms (3 Credits)  
This course will introduce students to the work of Trust & Safety in online platforms. Students will learn what happens behind the scenes of their favorite platforms while engaging in exercises designed to struggle with the challenges that T&S professionals face on a daily basis. This work forces T&S professionals to reckon with global norms and a range of ethical conundrums. This practice is also continuously evolving alongside the development of new technologies (e.g., AI) and in light of new political, legal, and global pressures.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Map the range of work involved in Trust & Safety.
  • Identify different organizational approaches to T&S.
  • Describe how different theories about T&S connect to the practice itself.
  • Articulate different ethical trade-offs underlying key T&S policies.
  
COMM 4201 - Information Policy: Applied Research and Analysis (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4200, STS 4200  
This course will address a wide range of information policy issues such as privacy, security, antitrust, intellectual property, algorithmic fairness, net neutrality, risk mitigation strategies, and other legal and policy compliance concerns in a simulated project management environment. Patterned on life cycle project management for products and services in contemporary large-scale technology companies, students will adopt specific topic areas for applied research and analysis working dynamically with other team members. Course outcomes include conducting upper-level research in specific information policy domains, experiential group dynamics, persuasive analytic presentations, fundamentals of project management in the technology sector, and insights into corporate hierarchies, organization, and functionalities.
Prerequisites: INFO 1200 or INFO 1260, or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2013, Spring 2013  
COMM 4220 - Psychology of Entertainment Media (3 Credits)  
Every media format uses entertainment, including video games, advertising, television, movies, sports, and news. This course examines the psychology (conscious and unconscious) of entertainment, including why people like entertainment, what makes a story entertaining, how people mentally process entertainment, what makes things frightening or funny, and whether or not entertainment can persuade.
Prerequisites: introductory psychology or COMM 1101 or COMM 2200.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to explain why people are motivated to engage in a variety of entertainment media affordances including fiction, movies, games, augmented and virtual reality, and social media.
  • Students will be able to describe key reflexive and thoughtful psychological principles associated with audience engagement.
  • Students will be able to apply these principles to develop new entertainment affordances.
  
COMM 4292 - Sexual Identities and the Media (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with FGSS 4292  
This class moves beyond a simple consideration of how lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and queer people have been represented in the mainstream media. We will explore both how dominant media forms have traditionally represented LGBTQ people, as well as how LGBTQ people have seized the opportunities offered by alternative media practices and technologies to articulate passions and politics that dominant media forms have little or no investment in.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, D-AG, LA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Analyze the history of US LGBTQ media representation.
  • Identify key debates in queer theory and apply these to LGBTQ media.
  • Create visual work that interprets, analyzes, and responds to contemporary media.
  
COMM 4300 - Ethics in New Media, Technology, and Communication (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4301  
This course examines moral and ethical issues in communication, new media, and technology. Using theories and research in moral philosophy and psychology, we examine how people perceive and reason about ethical issues presented by media and technology, and how moral action is influenced by cognitive, emotional, and ethical belief systems. Issues of autonomy, transparency, harm, privacy, manipulation, justice, democracy, equality, and care are discussed. We analyze the consistency between personal and professional ethics, the importance of moral character and agency, and the translation of moral thought to ethical action, and address the development of professional and personal ethical codes of conduct and research for communication professionals in the areas of new media and technology.
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG, ETH-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Winter 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to increase awareness of moral and ethical issues in media, technology, and communication.
  • Students will be able to explain moral psychology and ethical principles.
  • Students will be able to examine moral reasoning and ethical responsibilities-both personal and professional-that affect people and society.
  • Students will be able to examine issues and implications of ethical relativism and ethical principles.
  • Students will be able to reason thoughtfully and ethically about current cases and news items in communication, media, and technology.
  
COMM 4350 - Communicating Leadership and Ethics (3 Credits)  
Leadership development in a changing technological world presents new challenges. Digital and evolving technologies allow new and creative forms of communication, collaboration and teamwork with increasingly globally located and diverse team members who may work remotely and asynchronously to coordinate information and achieve shared goals. These, along with newer forms of organizational structure and culture and require leaders who lead with integrity and a mind toward creating ethical contexts and communication practices. This course uses discussion, reflective activities, current events, case studies, online interactions, and guest speakers to develop one's own future leadership skills and to communicate leadership ethically and effectively.
Prerequisites: junior or senior standing.  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment preference given to: Communication majors and/or Leadership minors who have taken LEAD 3100.  
Distribution Requirements: (ETH-AG, KCM-AG, SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to identify types and theories of leadership in an emerging and advancing technological and global world, and to find one's own leadership style.
  • Students will be able to explain how leadership is a communicative action situation, examine cases in the news and real life to use communicative ethics, and develop one's own ethical leadership potential.
  • Students will be able to evaluate and differentiate various contributions of individual and cultural diversity to one's teams, organizations, societies and oneself.
  • Students will be able to construct an action-plan for leading through ethical communication for the overall good.
  
COMM 4360 - Communication Networks and Social Capital (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4360  
Course covers the relationship between communication networks and social capital and explores the tension between individual and group capital.
Prerequisites: COMM 2450/INFO 2450 or INFO 2040.  
Distribution Requirements: (CA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to gain the ability to explain situations in network terms, as well as improve in their ability to evaluate claims made in quantitative network studies. This will be achieved through reading and discussion of social scientific research papers with attention to a) whether knowledge claims are justified by the data analysis presented, and b) ways to reconcile competing claims made in different papers. Students will learn to apply their ability to recognize network-related situations and evaluate factual claims by applying these skills to analysis of scenario documents (see #2).
  • Students will be able to improve their ability to do independent research about and to apply critical, theoretical thinking to both real and hypothetical scenarios. This will be achieved through the identification of scenarios where networks and social capital are relevant. Students will be asked to identify scenarios - including news articles.
  
COMM 4380 - Communication in Virtual Worlds (3 Credits)  
This course deals with the psychological, social, and technical aspects of being embodied in virtual environments. During this course, students will learn how human-and non-human-entities and their actions are represented as virtual bodies. The course is organized around three areas: an overview of how a sense of embodiment is created in virtual reality, an overview of research on virtual embodiment, and current and future applications. Students will experience virtual environments, relate course topics to current events, and experiment with the creation of immersive virtual content.
Enrollment Information: Primarily for: juniors and seniors.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Read and discuss peer-reviewed journal articles on embodied virtual reality and related topics.
  • Defend their views in class and make a presentation on how topics covered in class can be extended to new applications for embodied virtual reality.
  
COMM 4400 - Qualitative User Research and Design Methods (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4400  
This upper-level course provides an in-depth understanding of and experience with advanced concepts and techniques for researching, ideating, critiquing, designing, prototyping, and evaluating interactive technologies intended for people to use and incorporate in their lives. The course focuses on advanced user research and design methods.
Prerequisites: INFO 3450/COMM 3450/INFO 5355 or DEA 2730 or permission of instructor.  
Distribution Requirements: (DLG-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to develop in-depth understanding of human-computer interaction theory, design, and research through readings, class discussions, and weekly workshops.
  • Students will be able to develop skills needed to carry out design and evaluation of technologies from a human perspective through short assignments, class exercises, workshops, and semester-long project.
  • Students will be able to develop teamwork skills through a semester-long group project.
  
COMM 4450 - Computer-Mediated Communication (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4450  
Focuses on reading and evaluating the theories and research methodologies used to investigate communication via computer systems. Assignments include student collaborations using electronic conferencing and other advanced communication technologies, as well as reflections on and evaluations of these collaborations in light of current theories and research findings. Topics include virtual teams, videoconferencing, and others as they emerge.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain a theoretical understanding of the field of CMC and become familiar with both common and novel CMC tools,though readings and in depth class discussion of key articles in the field.
  • Students will gain an understanding of how CMC researchers conduct their research, though a series of mini projects that require them to examine CMC phenomena and write short reports on them.
  • Students will gain an in depth understanding of a selected area of CMC, through their team project and class presentation.
  
COMM 4490 - Social Behavior and Technology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4490  
This course explores personal connections in the digital age, and how information and communication technologies impact our lives and relationships. It focuses on how people manage interactions and identities, develop and maintain relationships, accomplish social goals, create shared meanings, and engage in collaboration and conflict in social media. Emphasis will be placed on how current thinking in relational communication can explain and anticipate interpersonal dynamics on the Internet, but also on how online behaviors may challenge traditional principles of human communication. A major part of the course is a semester-long research project in which students working in small groups design, run, and present their own empirical study of personal relationships and technology.
Prerequisites: COMM 2820, COMM 2450 and INFO 2450.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to examine and extend basic principles of interpersonal communication to human behavior and relationships on the Internet.
  • Students will be able to explore the nature and role of perception of self and others in computer-mediated interactions.
  • Students will be able to investigate how interpersonal relationships are affected by information and communication technologies.
  • Students will be able to form an awareness of research methods that are used to study social behavior on the Internet.
  
COMM 4500 - Language and Technology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4500  
Examines how new communication technologies affect the way we produce and understand language and modify interaction with one another. Focuses on the collaborative nature of language use and how Internet technologies affect the joint activities of speakers and listeners during the construction of meaning in conversation
Prerequisites: COMM 2450/INFO 2450 or permission of instructor.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG), (SSC-AS)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2010  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate a detailed understanding of theoretical perspectives, through careful reading and discussion of class materials.
  • Apply theories and methods from class to research projects.
  • Demonstrate organizational and collaborative skills through group research projects.
  
COMM 4660 - Public Communication of Science and Technology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with STS 4661  
Explores the structure, meanings, and implications of public communication of science and technology (PCST). Examines the contexts in which PCST occurs, looks at motivations and constraints of those involved in producing information about science for nonprofessional audiences, and analyzes the functions of PCST. Ties existing ideas about PCST to general communication research and leads to developing new knowledge about PCST.
Prerequisites: COMM 2850 or ENGRC 3500, or permission of instructor.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2021, Spring 2019  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to identify scholarly literature relevant to analysis of public communication of science and technology.
  • Students will be able to identify and analyze recurrent themes in the scholarly literature on public communication of science and technology.
  • Students will be able to produce scholarly writing (including appropriate documentation) about public communication of science and technology.
  
COMM 4760 - Population Health Communication (3 Credits)  
This senior-level undergraduate seminar provides an overview of theory and research on communication related to population health, including strategic efforts to impact health behavior and structural environments that support health, media portrayals of health issues, and news coverage of health and social policy with impacts on the health and distribution of health in populations. Topics include: theories of behavior change and message effects, campaigns to improve behavioral and structural determinants of health, the intersection of health and politics, and implications of changes in media platforms for population health campaigns and research.
Prerequisites: COMM 2820.  
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG, SCH-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Winter 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to interpret major theories that try to explain variation in (a) health-related behavior among individuals and larger social units, and (b) responses to health-related messages designed to promote behavior or policy change.
  • Students will be able to analyze the implications of those theories for the potential role of public health communication in changing behavior.
  • Students will be able to evaluate the credibility of the evidence for the effectiveness of prominent, historical examples of public health communication programs in the US and abroad.
  • Students will be able to evaluate evidence for effects of other forms of public communication relating to health (advertising, news coverage, media programming) on health and policy outcomes.
  • Students will be able to synthesize knowledge and skills learned in outcomes (1) through (4) to develop a systematic review of research in an area of interest.
  
COMM 4777 - Advertising and Society (3 Credits)  
This course will examine the role of advertising and consumerism in US culture and social life. We will begin by exploring the rise of a Western consumer society and its evolution over the course of the twentieth century; various theoretical and critical perspectives will be introduced to illuminate the changing relationships between advertising, culture, and the economy. We will then examine how advertising “texts” and “producers” represent various social identities: gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and more. The final section of the course will focus on promotional culture in the early 21st century; topics will include social media advertising/user-generated content; ideologies and practices of branding the self; and the role of influencers and the creator economy.
COMM 4800 - Behavioral Science Interventions (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 4800  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2020  
COMM 4860 - Risk Communication (3 Credits)  
Every day we face known and unknown risks to our own health and safety and risks to the environment. In many cases we not only misperceive these risks, but we frequently make decisions that put us at even greater risk. Communicating the likelihood of harm based on complex, incomplete, and uncertain science is a challenge. This course uses case studies to illustrate theories of risk communication, and practical in-class exercises to demonstrate how theories apply to specific situations.
Distribution Requirements: (SBA-AG)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Winter 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to explain how the communication of complex risk differs from other types of communication.
  • Students will be able to describe a range of theories relevant to risk communication.
  • Students will be able to gain experience in applying communication theory to the practice of risk communication.
  
COMM 4940 - Special Topics in Communication (1-3 Credits)  
Study of topics in communication not otherwise provided by a department course and determined by the interest of faculty members and students. Please check department website for most up-to-date offerings.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Spring 2022  
COMM 4951 - Communication Industries: DC COMM (1 Credit)  
This fall semester seminar introduces students to the world of professional communication. Students meet communication alumni working in media, technology, public relations, brand management, marketing, and civil services. Students learn about alumni' roles in the changing professional communication landscape. Students create a resume and learn interview skills, in addition to preparing an ePortfolio. In preparation for a required trip to visit companies in DC, the course will cover relevant background information about each company and will include Zoom meetings with other communication and media firms.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: Communication majors.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify the roles of each firm in the communication industry, its challenges, and key drivers for the future.
  • Discuss professional opportunities with working alumni through a variety of networking channels.
  • Evaluate yourself navigating a career within communication industries.
  • Construct and present an ePortfolio which demonstrates key communicative skills.
  • Evaluate how communication industries can contribute to sustainable development goals.
  
COMM 4960 - Communication Internship (1 Credit)  
Students receive a structured, on-the-job learning experience under the supervision of communication professionals in cooperating organizations. A minimum of 60 hours of on-the-job work is required; the number of work hours beyond 60 is left to the discretion of the intern and the supervising company. A final project linking communication theory to practical work experience is required. All internships must be approved by the internship coordinator before the work experience segment. All COMM 4960 internship courses must adhere to the CALS guidelines at cals.cornell.edu/academics/student-research/internship. For more information about registering for credit and COMM 4960, please see https://communication.cals.cornell.edu/undergraduate-program/internship-information-0.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: COMM majors or minors.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify and reflect on professional goals for their internship.
  • Apply and develop communication skills in a professional setting.
  • Integrate communication theory and experience in communication-related professions.
  
COMM 4970 - Individual Study in Communication (1-3 Credits)  
Individual study under faculty supervision. Work should concentrate on locating, assimilating, synthesizing, and reporting existing knowledge on a selected topic. Attempts to implement this knowledge in a practical application are desirable.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: sophomores, juniors and seniors with a 3.0 GPA.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
COMM 4980 - Communication Teaching Experience (1-3 Credits)  
Periodic meetings with the instructor cover realization of course objectives, evaluation of teaching methods, and student feedback. In addition to aiding with the actual instruction, each student prepares a paper on some aspect of the course.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: juniors or seniors with a 3.0 GPA (2.7 if teaching assistant for skills development course). Intended for: undergraduates desiring classroom teaching experience.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
COMM 4990 - Independent Research (1-3 Credits)  
Permits outstanding students to conduct laboratory or field research in communication under appropriate faculty supervision. The research should be scientific: systematic, controlled, empirical. Research goals should include description, prediction, explanation, or policy orientation and should generate new knowledge.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: juniors and seniors with a 3.0 GPA.  
Exploratory Studies: (CU-UG)
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
COMM 5150 - Organizational Communication: Theory and Practice (3 Credits)  
This is a survey course of issues that influence communication in organizations. Topics include formal organizational structure, social networks, information technology, leadership, team dynamics, and cross-culture differences.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to develop basic knowledge about key factors that may influence effectiveness of communication in contemporary organizations.
  • Students will be able to develop critical thinking and analytic abilities through case analysis.
  • Students will be able to develop problem-solving capabilities as students propose and explore solutions to resolve challenging management situations.
  
COMM 5300 - Ethics in New Media, Technology, and Communication (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 5301  
This course examines moral and ethical issues in communication, new media, and technology. Using theories and research in moral philosophy and psychology, we examine how people perceive and reason about ethical issues presented by media and technology, and how moral action is influenced by cognitive, emotional, and ethical belief systems. Issues of autonomy, transparency, harm, privacy, manipulation, justice, democracy, equality, and care are discussed. We analyze the consistency between personal and professional ethics, the importance of moral character and agency, and the translation of moral thought to ethical action, and address the development of professional and personal ethical codes of conduct and research for communication professionals in the areas of new media and technology.
Last Four Terms Offered: Summer 2025, Winter 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to increase awareness of moral and ethical issues in media, technology, and communication.
  • Students will be able to explain moral psychology and ethical principles.
  • Students will be able to examine moral reasoning and ethical responsibilities-both personal and professional-that affect people and society.
  • Students will be able to examine issues and implications of ethical relativism and ethical principles.
  • Students will be able to reason thoughtfully and ethically about current cases and news items in communication, media, and technology.
  
COMM 5380 - Communication in Virtual Worlds (3 Credits)  
This course deals with the psychological, social, and technical aspects of being embodied in virtual environments. During this course, students will learn how human-and non-human-entities and their actions are represented as virtual bodies. The course is organized around three areas: an overview of how a sense of embodiment is created in virtual reality, an overview of research on virtual embodiment, and current and future applications. Students will experience virtual environments, relate course topics to current events, and experiment with the creation of immersive virtual content.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Read and discuss peer-reviewed journal articles on embodied virtual reality and related topics.
  • Defend their views in class and make a presentation on how topics covered in class can be extended to new applications for embodied virtual reality.
  
COMM 5730 - Mindful Intercultural Communication (3 Credits)  
In this course, students will read theories and research in positive psychology, mindfulness meditation, and intercultural communication to gain a basic understanding of the emerging science on the effects of mindfulness practices on effectiveness in intercultural communication, as well as mental and physical health. Students will also learn a series of meditative routines, including both basic breathing techniques and more advanced meditative practices that conscientiously cultivate such positive emotions as gratitude, joy, compassion, empathy, equanimity, forgiveness and connectedness of humanity. Through regular and persistent practices, students will grow their attentiveness, compassion, and empathy that are vital for constructive intercultural and interpersonal communication.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to describe and explain how meditation on mindfulness and compassion can affect the quality and effectiveness of interpersonal relationships in various cultural contexts.
  • Students will be able to explain and engage various meditative practices, along with their benefits, intellectually and experientially.
  • Students will be able to apply insights gained from mindful meditation to reduce stress in personal life, to boost the quality of interpersonal communication with classmates and other members of the Cornell community, and to achieve higher effectiveness in intercultural communication.
  
COMM 5800 - Behavioral Science Interventions (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 5800  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022  
COMM 6210 - Advanced Communication and the Environment (3 Credits)  
Students investigate how values, attitudes, social structure, and communication affect public perceptions of environmental risk and public opinion about the environment. A primary focus is mass media's impact on public perceptions of the environment, how the media portray the environment, and discussion of the implications of public consumption of environmental content.
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2011  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to identify and describe contemporary trends in environmental communication scholarship and literature.
  • Students will be able to productively analyze and critique emerging environmental communication research.
  • Students will be able to integrate and apply theory from communication and related disciplines to illuminate social processes relevant to environmental outcomes.
  • Students will be able to conceptualize and articulate a novel research study in environmental communication.
  
COMM 6211 - Information, Technology, and Society (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 6210  
This course explores key theoretical and methodological approaches underlying the study of information, technology, and society, focused primarily (though not exclusively) on social science approaches-drawing from disciplines like sociology, communications, history, science & technology studies, and others. The course is designed to be rigorous and to prepare students to make their own analytically and theoretically sound contributions to scholarship about information, technology, and society.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2017  
COMM 6300 - Queer Media Studies (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with FGSS 6301, LGBT 6301  
This course investigates how sexuality, broadly conceived, is produced, represented, and enacted through a variety of media. We will consider how groups of people collectively produce their erotic identifications, practices, and connections through media and in space. These affinities may be transient or life-long, co-present or virtual, of the majority or marginalized. Rather than assuming sex is a private matter, we will analyze the ways sexuality is constituted through media engagements, in physical and online spaces, and in the ways that mediated desire play out in broad movements of consumerism and neoliberal aspirations. We will consider sexual cultures from a transnational perspective and in historical context. The course will address how structural hierarchies such as gender, race, sexual identification, and location help to shape sexual media.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Evaluate a variety of contemporary analyses of media and sexuality.
  • Identify intersections among media, sexuality, gender, race, and class.
  • Appraise the significance of historical and geographical specificity in mediated sexuality.
  • Situate media studies within broader approaches to sexuality.
  • Conduct an independent research project with particular attention to writing-as-research.
  
COMM 6310 - Behavior and Information Technology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 6310  
This course explores the behavioral foundations of communication technology and the information sciences, and the ways in which theories and methods from the behavioral sciences play a role in understanding people's use of, access to and interactions with information and communication technologies.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
COMM 6450 - Computer-Mediated Communication (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 6450  
Focuses on reading and evaluating the theories and research methodologies used to investigate communication via computer systems. Assignments include student collaborations using electronic conferencing and other advanced communication technologies, as well as reflections on and evaluations of these collaborations in light of current theories and research findings. Topics include virtual teams, videoconferencing, and others as they emerge.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain a theoretical understanding of the field of CMC and become familiar with both common and novel CMC tools, though readings and in depth class discussion of key articles in the field.
  • Students will gain an understanding of how CMC researchers conduct their research, though a series of mini projects that require them to examine CMC phenomena and write short reports on them.
  • Students will gain an in depth understanding of a selected area of CMC, through their team project and class presentation.
  
COMM 6490 - Social Behavior and Technology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 6490  
This course explores personal connections in the digital age, and how information and communication technologies impact our lives and relationships. It focuses on how people manage interactions and identities, develop and maintain relationships, accomplish social goals, create shared meanings, and engage in collaboration and conflict in social media. Emphasis will be placed on how current thinking in relational communication can explain and anticipate interpersonal dynamics on the Internet, but also on how online behaviors may challenge traditional principles of human communication. A major part of the course is a semester-long research project in which students working in small groups design, run, and present their own empirical study of personal relationships and technology.
Prerequisites: COMM 2820, COMM 2450, and INFO 2450.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to examine and extend basic principles of interpersonal communication to human behavior and relationships on the Internet.
  • Students will be able to explore the nature and role of perception of self and others in computer-mediated interactions.
  • Students will be able to investigate how interpersonal relationships are affected by information and communication technologies.
  • Students will be able to form an awareness of research methods that are used to study social behavior on the Internet.
  
COMM 6500 - Language and Technology (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with INFO 6500  
Examines how new communication technologies affect the way we produce and understand language and modify interaction with one another. Focuses on the collaborative nature of language use and how Internet technologies affect the joint activities of speakers and listeners during the construction of meaning in conversation. The graduate students are expected to take the lead on the small group class projects, in terms of identifying research questions, working out the method, and performing statistics. This requires mentorship of the undergraduates on their team. The graduate students are also expected to submit more in depth analyses of the readings for their individual paper assignments.
Prerequisites: COMM 2450/INFO 2450 or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2017  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate a detailed understanding of theoretical perspectives, through careful reading and discussion of class materials.
  • Apply theories and methods from class to research projects.
  • Demonstrate organizational and collaborative skills through group research projects.
  
COMM 6660 - Public Engagement in Science (3 Credits)  
Crosslisted with STS 6661  
In recent years, the scientific community has increasingly referred to public engagement in science. This seminar explores the scholarly literature addressing that move; the links between public engagement and earlier concerns about sciences literacy, public understanding of science, and outreach; and the intersections between literature in communication and in science studies on issues involving the relationships among science(s) and public(s).
Exploratory Studies: (CU-SBY)
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Spring 2016  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to identify scholarly literature relevant to analysis of public communication of science and technology.
  • Students will be able to identify and analyze recurrent themes in the scholarly literature on public communication of science and technology.
  • Students will be able to produce scholarly writing (including appropriate documentation) about public communication of science and technology.
  
COMM 6730 - Research Writing Seminar in Communication (3 Credits)  
Academics are in the business of creating knowledge. The way that academics in the social sciences typically share the knowledge that we create-the way that most often earns us credit in our universities and among our professional community-is through our writing. In the field of communication, specifically, our writing typically takes the form of journal articles, which may be preceded by conference versions of our papers.At times, we also write book chapters, books, and book reviews; increasingly, scholars in our field may turn to other avenues of knowledge dissemination, including lay articles, blogs, social media, and the like (see Boczkowski & Delli Carpini (2020) for a rundown.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Pose a research question and articulate its relevance.
  • Situate your project clearly within existing research on your topic, showing a contribution.
  • Construct parts of a paper that can do well their specific work.
  • Provide, receive, and revise in response to constructive criticism and peer feedback.
  • Use appropriate citation practices and adhere to the norms of academic writing style.
  • Present research findings through a variety of academic genres to specialists and non-specialists.
  
COMM 6750 - Research Methods for Social Networks and Social Media (3 Credits)  
This course will train students to deploy network methods and computational techniques with the goal of using data to advance communication theory. Students will enter with a theoretical question that they believe can be tested with either social network data or data drawn from social media archives. They will learn relevant issues of research design, methods of data acquisition and appropriate methods of statistical analysis for data of this kind. Students will use this knowledge to produce a paper reporting the results of data analysis that addresses their question.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2019, Fall 2017  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will gain the ability to evaluate social science research that uses social network methods. This will be achieved through reading and discussion of social scientific research papers with attention to a) whether variables have appropriately operationalized theoretical constructs, b) whether knowledge claims are justified by the data analysis presented.
  • Students will improve their ability to do independent research using network analysis and social media data by producing a completed research paper using these methodologies.
  • Students will learn to convert qualitative observations and theoretical hypothesis about social relationships and social interactions into quantifiable ideas which can be tested with communication network data or other behavioral data drawn from social media.
  • Students will improve their speaking and writing skills, in particular in regard to articulating theoretical ideas about collective social behavior - conversations, the evolution of groups, the diffusion of ideas -- in quantifiable ideas that can be tested with data. Students will be engaged actively in oral discussions in class. The final paper will be of quality appropriate to submit to a conference.
  • Students will work on lab assignments. Some lab assignments will be collaborative and require students with diverse skills (e.g. those with a strong theory background can work with those with strong data extraction and analysis skills) to work together.
  
COMM 6770 - Attitudes and Social Judgment (3 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2019  
COMM 6790 - Social Media Pro-Seminar (1.5 Credits)  
This graduate-level seminar is designed to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the complex and rapidly-evolving landscape of social media research and theory. It is offered as a 1.5-credit course with the option to repeat so that students can enroll for both semesters. In this seminar, we will examine current research in social media, investigate critical questions from various methodological perspectives, and address the contemporary debates about social media and technology in the research field and public discourse. While the seminar focuses on social cognition and social influence, it covers a broad spectrum of topics spanning digital technologies, social behaviors, and society.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Develop a comprehensive understanding of the main approaches, theories, and methodologies in social media research.
  • Synthesize and evaluate research evidence across conceptual dimensions, different research paradigms, and divergent viewpoints.
  • Employ theoretical knowledge and research evidence to generate original research questions.
  • Evaluate the relevance of research evidence for different sociocultural contexts and experiences.
  • Identify and assess ethical issues that arise in social media research.
  • Determine and justify broader impacts of research for practice and society.
  • Demonstrate critical analysis, social media literacy, and argumentation skills to contribute to contemporary debates in social media research and practice.
  
COMM 6800 - Studies in Communication (3 Credits)  
Reviews classical and contemporary readings in communication, including key concepts and areas of investigation. Explores the scope of the field, the interrelationships of its various branches, and examines the role of theory in the research process.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: communication graduate students or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Identify major theoretical perspectives, domains of research, and contexts of focus in the field of communication.
  • Describe the research interests of our faculty, their general areas of research, and their theoretical approaches.
  • Integrate theory and epistemological practice in an area of the discipline to inform their research trajectory in the field.
  
COMM 6810 - Advanced Communication Theory (3 Credits)  
Development of, and contemporary issues in, communication theory. Discusses the interaction between communication and society, social groupings, and mental processing.
Prerequisites: COMM 6800, or graduate standing and permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to use basic principles of epistemology to analyze past research and plan future research.
  • Students will be able to analyze how communication scholarship has developed over time in an area of scholarship.
  • Students will be able to develop, reflect on, and refine a research proposal to solve an applied problem or develop new knowledge.
  
COMM 6820 - Quantitative Research Methods (3 Credits)  
Analyzes methods of communication research based on a social science foundation. Goals are to understand processes and rationales for qualitative, textual, survey, and experimental methods. Students gain experience with some of these methods through modest individual or group research projects and critiques of selected contemporary communication studies.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to conduct and evaluate empirical research in the field of communication.
  
COMM 6830 - Qualitative Research Methods in Communication (3 Credits)  
Reviews qualitative methods used in communication research, including interviews, focus groups, fieldwork (ethnography), and case studies. Students practice the various methods so they can learn to apply them to their own research. Students also discuss how researchers analyze qualitative data and build theories from their observations.
Prerequisites: COMM 6820.  
Forbidden Overlaps: COMM 6830, GDEV 4740, GDEV 5740  
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: graduate students.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to describe strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research.
  • Students will be able to distinguish between different epistemological approaches within qualitative research.
  • Students will be able to analyze the key steps in conducting qualitative research including access, sampling, data collecting, data analysis, and writing.
  • Students will be able to apply the knowledge and skills learned in the class to an independent qualitative research project.
  
COMM 6840 - Theory & Research in Group Comm & Decision Making (3 Credits)  
Graduate seminar focusing on theory and research in communication and decision-making in small groups. Emphasis is on task-oriented groups. Topics include information exchange, decision-making processes, types of tasks, social influence, group development processes, group support systems, intergroup processes, and leadership. Special attention is given to methodological challenges in group research.
Last Four Terms Offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2011, Fall 2009  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to review theory related task group processes and outcomes.
  • Students will be able to evaluate methodological challenges unique to the study of groups and teams and appropriate methodological tools.
  • Students will be able to develop ideas for new directions of research contribution to understanding group processes and performance.
  • Students will be able to integrate insights on group processes and outcomes across multiple disciplines.
  
COMM 6940 - Graduate Special Topics in Communication (1-3 Credits)  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Fall 2016  
COMM 7010 - Theories to Think With (3 Credits)  
By offering generalizable principles and frameworks, theory allows us to grapple with a wide array of phenomena across varied contexts. As scholars progress in their intellectual journey, they begin by working to understand what contributions theory offers to a discipline. They must then grapple with the limitations and openings of theory as they look to conduct their own research. Finally, scholars begin producing their own theory. In this course, we will focus primarily on the second phase of this journey. We will read an assortment of different theoretical frameworks to grapple with how those theories can help us build our analytical toolkit.
Learning Outcomes:
  • Reference multiple new theoretical toolkits.
  • Articulate different ways in which theory is constructed, leveraged, and deployed.
  • Apply a theory in analyzing your own data.
  • Strategically deploy theory in an original research paper.
  
COMM 7600 - Special Topics in Media, Technology, and Society (3 Credits)  
Traditional and emergent media are situated within particular socio-cultural contexts, which can be examined through their varying contents, forms, structures, effects, and production cultures. Against this backdrop, this upper-level graduate seminar will explore contemporary issues and debates at the intersection of media, technology, and society.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2018  
Learning Outcomes:
  • Describe the interrelationships between media, technology, and society from a variety of social scientific perspectives.
  • Analyze the complex ways that contemporary media shape and are shaped by the social fabric.
  • Evaluate pressing controversies about media and communication technologies in the legal, political, and cultural realms.
  • Demonstrate critical thinking, research, and writing skills through the production of an original research paper.
  
COMM 7970 - Graduate Independent Study (1-3 Credits)  
Individual study concentrating on locating, assimilating, synthesizing, and reporting existing knowledge on a selected topic.
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
COMM 7990 - Graduate Research (1-9 Credits)  
Small-group or individual research based on original, empirical, data-based designs regarding topical issues in communication not otherwise examined in a graduate field course.
Enrollment Information: Enrollment limited to: appropriate communication graduate course work or permission of instructor.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023  
COMM 9900 - Doctoral-Level Dissertation Research (1-12 Credits)  
Dissertation research for Ph.D. candidates.
Prerequisites: completion of A exam required.  
Last Four Terms Offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023