Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, you will:

1. Articulate what it means to produce theory within the social scientific study of media and communication;

2. Read, interpret, and evaluate existing theoretical work;

3. Develop and produce written work advancing original theoretical arguments; and

4. Become socialized into the intellectual norms of the field of communication.

Required Readings

You will be required to purchase, rent, or check out from the library three different texts for this course:

• Waisbord, Silvio. 2019. Communication: A Post-Discipline. Malden, MA: Polity.

• Swedberg, Richard. 2014. The Art of Social Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

• Katz, Elihu, John Durham Peters, Tamar Liebes, and Avril Orloff, eds. 2003. Canonic Texts in Media Research: Are There Any? Should There be Any? How About These? Malden, MA: Polity.

All other texts will be provided for you on Canvas. It is expected that you will come to each course meeting having thoroughly read the assigned reading and that you are ready with comments and questions to contribute to our group discussions.

Assignments

Weekly Reading Reflections (10 x 25 pts. / 25%)

Each week you should write a post (usually between 500 and 1,500 words) reflecting on the week’s readings, putting the ideas presented in them in conversation with one another. You will post these reflections to Canvas by 6pm on the evening before each class. It is expected that you read your colleagues’ posts, as well, and comment on them where you have productive disagreements or differences in interpretation.

In-Class Discussion (10 x 25 pts. / 25%)

This is a discussion-based course, and our structure for weekly discussions will follow what I call the Dinner Party Method. Each class session will have a discussion facilitator (the Dinner Host). The Dinner Host must prepare a series of broad questions that cut across the various readings of the week, identifying both through lines and points of conflict that will make for insightful conversation. Each other student will then play the role of a Dinner Guest, who is the author or subject of one of the week's readings. The Dinner Guests must ensure that their authors are represented in the group discussion. They should drawn on the relevant text(s) to contribute their author’s perspective to answering the host’s various questions, as well as to engaging with the other Dinner Guests' contributions to the discussion.

Final Paper (500 pts. / 50%)

By the end of the quarter, you will be expected to write a proposal for a theory-driven research project of your choosing. Along the way, you will be expected to provide written updates to me, as well as oral updates to the class, so that we can discuss your blossoming ideas and help them grow.

Course Schedule

Week 1: What is Communication? / Social Theory & Theorizing the Social

Waisbord, Silvio. 2019. Communication: A Post-Discipline. Malden, MA: Polity. [Skim whole book, but read with full attention Introduction, “The Patchwork of Communication Studies,” and “A Post-Discipline.”]

Craig, Robert T. 1999. “Communication Theory as a Field.” Communication Theory 9 (2): 119–61.

Ng, Eve, Khadijah Costley White, and Anamik Saha. 2020. “#CommunicationSoWhite: Race and Power in the Academy and Beyond.” Communication, Culture & Critique 13 (2): 143–51.

Swedberg, Richard. 2014. The Art of Social Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Skim whole book, but read with full attention Introduction and “Part I: How to Theorize.”]

Week 2: The First & Second Chicago Schools

Dewey, John. 1925. Experience and Nature. Chicago: Open Court. [“Nature, Communication, and Meaning.”]

Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self & Society, 317–28. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [“Obstacles and Promises in the Development of an Ideal Society.”]

Park, Robert E. 1922. The Immigrant Press and Its Control. New York: Harper. [“Why There is a Foreign-Language Press.”]

Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. [Introduction and excerpts from “Performances.”]

Blumer, Herbert. 1962. “Society as Symbolic Interaction.” In Human Behavior and Social Process: An Interactionist Approach, edited by Arnold M. Rose. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Blumer, Herbert. 1966. “Sociological Implications of the Thought of George Herbert Mead.” American Journal of Sociology 71 (5): 535–44.

Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Penguin Books. [“The Reality of Everyday Life,” “Social Interaction in Everyday Life,” and excerpts from “Institutionalization.”]

Dinner Guests:

John Dewey, played by ______________________________

George Herbert Mead, played by ______________________________

Erving Goffman, played by ______________________________

Herbert Blumer, played by ______________________________

Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann (as one), played by ______________________________

Week 3: Mass Media & Mass Culture: Sociology, Psychology & Cultural Studies Weigh In

Carey, James W. 1967. “Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan.” The Antioch Review 27 (1): 5–39.

Sharma, Sarah. 2022. Introduction to Re-Understanding Media: Feminist Extensions of Marshall McLuhan, edited by Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Carey, James W. 1989. Communication as Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman. [“A Cultural Approach to Communication.”]

Horton, Donald, and Richard R. Wohl. 1956. “Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance.” Psychiatry 19: 215–29.

Gerbner, George, and Larry Gross. 1976. “Living with Television: The Violence Profile.” Journal of Communication 26 (2): 172–99.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002 [1944]. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.”]

Durham Peters, John. 2003. “The Subtlety of Horkheimer and Adorno: Reading ‘The Culture Industry.” In Canonic Texts in Media Research: Are There Any? Should There be Any? How About These?, edited by Elihu Katz, John Durham Peters, Tamar Liebes, and Avril Orloff, 58–73. Malden, MA: Polity.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Introduction and excerpts from “Culture and Politics.”]

Lang, Kurt, and Gladys Engel Lang. 2009. “Mass Society, Mass Culture, and Mass Communication: The Meaning of Mass.” International Journal of Communication 3: 998–1024.

Dinner Guests:

Harold Innis, played by ______________________________

Marshall McLuhan, played by ______________________________

James Carey, played by ______________________________

George Gerbner & Larry Gross (as one), played by ______________________________

Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer (as one), played by ______________________________

Pierre Bourdieu, played by ______________________________

Kurt & Gladys Lang (as one), played by ______________________________

Week 4: Publics & Public Opinion

Lippmann, Walter. 1922. Introduction to Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.

Dewey, John. 1927. The Public and Its Problems. Chicago: Swallow Press. [“Search for the Great Community.”]

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. [“Cultural Roots.”]

Habermas, Jürgen. 1974. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article.” New German Critique 3: 49–55.

Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26: 56–80.

Squires, Catherine R. 2002. “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres.” Communication Theory 12 (4): 446–68.

Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. 1974. “The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion.” Journal of Communication 24 (2): 43–51.

Simpson, Christopher. 1996. “Elisabeth Noelle‐Neumann's ‘Spiral of Silence’ and the Historical Context of Communication Theory.” Journal of Communication 46 (3): 149–71.

Walch, Katherine Cramer. 2004. Talking About Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [“The Public’s Part of Public Discussion.”]

Dinner Guests:

Walter Lippmann, played by ______________________________

John Dewey, played by ______________________________

Benedict Anderson, played by ______________________________

Jürgen Habermas, played by ______________________________

Nancy Fraser, played by ______________________________

Catherine Squires, played by ______________________________

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, played by ______________________________

Katherine Cramer Walch, played by ______________________________

Week 5: Media & the Flows of Communication

Lasswell, Harold D. 1948. “The Structure and Function of Communication in Society,” In The Communication of Ideas, edited by Lyman Bryson. New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies.

Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. 1948. The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes up his Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Columbia University Press. [“The Nature of Personal Influence.”]

Katz, Elihu, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. 1955. Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. [“Between Media and Mass,” “The Part Played by People,” and “The Two-Step Flow of Communication.”]

Katz, Elihu. 2001. “Lazarsfeld’s Map of Media Effects.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 13 (3): 270–79.

Weimann, Gabriel. 1982. “On the Importance of Marginality: One More Step into the Two-Step Flow of Communication.” American Sociological Review 47 (6): 764–73.

Rogers, Everett M. 2003 [1962]. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press. [Preface and “Elements of Diffusion.”]

Bennett, W. Lance, and Jarol B. Manheim. 2006. “The One-Step Flow of Communication.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 608: 213–32.

Dinner Guests:

Harold Lasswell, played by ______________________________

Paul Lazarsfeld & Elihu Katz (as one), played by ______________________________

Gabriel Weinmann, played by ______________________________

Everett Rogers, played by ______________________________

Lance Bennett, played by ______________________________

Week 6: Communication in/as Interaction

Hall, Stuart. 1980. “Encoding/Decoding.” In Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, edited by Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 128–37. London: Unwin Hyman.

Gurevitch, Michael, and Paddy Scannell. 2003. “Canonization Achieved? Stuart Hall’s ‘Encoding/Decoding’.” In Canonic Texts in Media Research: Are There Any? Should There be Any? How About These?, edited by Elihu Katz, John Durham Peters, Tamar Liebes, and Avril Orloff, 231–47. Malden, MA: Polity.

Radway, Janice A. 1982. Introduction to Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Katz, Elihu, Michael Gurevitch, and Hadassah Haas. 1973. “On the Uses of Mass Media for Important Things.” American Sociological Review 38 (2): 164–81.

Ball-Rokeach, Sandra J. 1985. “The Origins of Individual Media-System Dependency: A Sociological Framework.” Communication Research 12 (4): 485–510.

Ball-Rokeach, Sandra J. 1998. “A Theory of Media Power and a Theory of Media Use: Different Stories, Questions, and Ways of Thinking.” Mass Communication & Society 1 (1/2): 5–40.

Eliasoph, Nina, and Paul Lichterman. 2003. “Culture In Interaction.” American Journal of Sociology 108 (4): 735–94.

Dinner Guests:

Stuart Hall, played by ______________________________

Jan Radway, played by ______________________________

Elihu Katz, played by ______________________________

Sandra Ball-Rokeach, played by ______________________________

Nina Eliasoph & Paul Lichterman (as one), played by ______________________________

Week 7: Media, Communication & Politics

McCombs, Maxwell E., and Donald L. Shaw. 1972. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (2): 176–87.

Gandy, Oscar H. 1980. “Information in Health: Subsidized News.” Media, Culture and Society 2 (2): 101–15.

Berkowitz, Dan, and Douglas B. Adams. 1990. “Information Subsidy and Agenda-Building in Local Television News.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 67 (4): 723–31.

Entman, Robert M. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51–58.

Scheufele, Dietram, and David Tewksbury. 2007. “Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models.” Journal of Communication 57 (1): 9–20.

Bennett, W. Lance. 1990. “Toward a Theory of Press–State Relations in the United States.” Journal of Communication 40 (2): 103–27.

Entman, Robert M. 2003. “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House's Frame After 9/11.” Political Communication 20 (4): 415–32.

Gitlin, Todd. 1980. The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Introduction and “Media Routines and Political Crises.”]

Barker-Plummer, Bernadette. 1996. “The Dialogic of Media and Social Movements.” Peace Review 8 (1): 27–33.

Dinner Guests:

Max McCombs, played by ______________________________

Oscar Gandy, played by ______________________________

Lance Bennett, played by ______________________________

Bob Entman, played by ______________________________

Todd Gitlin, played by ______________________________

Bernadette Barker-Plummer, played by ______________________________

Week 8: Digital Networks & the New Media System

Castells, Manuel. 2000. “Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society.” British Journal of Sociology 51 (1): 5–24.

van Dijk, Jan. 2006 [1999]. The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. [Introduction and “Networks: The Nervous System of Society.”]

Noble, Safiya Umoja. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press. [Introduction and Conclusion.]

Gillespie, Tarleton. 2014. “The Relevance of Algorithms.” In Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, edited by Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, and Kirsten Foot, 167–94. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gillespie, Tarleton. 2018. Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [“All Platforms Moderate.”]

Chadwick, Andrew. 2017. The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. New York: Oxford University Press. [Introduction, “The Contemporary Contexts of Hybridity,” and “The Political Information Cycle.”]

Kreiss, Daniel, and Shannon C. McGregor. 2018. “Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle.” Political Communication 35 (2): 155–77.

Dinner Guests:

Manuel Castells, played by ______________________________

Jan van Dijk, played by ______________________________

Tarleton Gillespie, played by ______________________________

Safiya Noble, played by ______________________________

Andrew Chadwick, played by ______________________________

Daniel Kreiss & Shannon McGregor (as one), played by ______________________________

Week 9: “Makers” & Mass Self-Communication

Castells, Manuel. 2007. “Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society.” International Journal of Communication 1: 238–66.

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. [Introduction and Conclusion.]

Neff, Gina. 2012. Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [“The Social Risks of the Dot-Com Era” and Conclusion.]

Baym, Nancy K. 2015. “Connect With Your Audience! The Relational Labor of Connection.” The Communication Review 18 (1): 14–22.

Duffy, Brooke Erin. 2017. (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [“Entrepreneurial Wishes and Career Dreams” and “Apsirational Labor’s (In)Visibility.”]

Cunningham, Stuart, and David Craig. 2019. “Creator Governance in Social Media Entertainment.” Social Media + Society 5 (4).

Dinner Guests:

Manuel Castells, played by ______________________________

Henry Jenkins, played by ______________________________

Gina Neff, played by ______________________________

Nancy Baym, played by ______________________________

Brook Duffy, played by ______________________________

Stuart Cunningham & David Craig (as one), played by ______________________________

Week 10: Old Theories Made New

Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. 2017. The Mediated Construction of Reality. Malden, MA: Polity. [Introduction, “The Social World as Communicative Construction,” and Conclusion.]

Entman, Robert M., and Nikki Usher. 2018. “Framing in a Fractured Democracy: Impacts of Digital Technology on Ideology, Power and Cascading Network Activation.” Journal of Communication 68 (2): 298–308.

Bruns, Axel, and Tim Highfield. 2016. “Is Habermas on Twitter? Social Media and the Public Sphere.” In Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics, edited by Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbo, Anders Olof Larsson, Christian Christensen, 56–73. London, UK: Routledge.

Papacharissi, Zizi. 2015. Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [“Affective News and Networked Publics” and “Affective Publics.”]

Thorson, Kjerstin, and Chris Wells. 2016. “Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age.” Communication Theory 26 (3): 309–28.

Anderson, C.W. “Fake News is Not a Virus: On Platforms and Their Effects.” Communication Theory 31 (1): 42–61.

Dinner Guests:

Nick Couldry & Andreas Hepp (as one), played by ______________________________

Axel Bruns & Tim Highfield (as one), played by ______________________________

Zizi Papacharissi, played by ______________________________

Kjerstin Thorson & Chris Wells (as one), played by ______________________________

Chris Anderson, played by ______________________________