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Department of Communication & Media Studies

Bachelor's Degree in Media Studies

Program Offered:

The Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies provides students with theoretically-focused and application-based frameworks to understand media, media technology, and its influence upon domestic and global culture and society. Students will study theoretically grounded approaches to a variety of media, becoming  sensitive to the ways power affects media creation, distribution, representation, access, and change.  Students will explore and contribute to a lively and stimulating socially conscious intellectual environment -- one that allows every student to expand the scope of his or her cultural and educational experience. The program is broad-based, focusing on studies of a wide range of traditional, alternative, historical, contemporary, and emerging media within their cultural, social, historical, economic, global, and political contexts. The goal of the degree program is to help students become theoretically-informed navigators and critical consumers of media texts, skills useful for citizens of a dynamically mediated world.

The program requirements for a degree in Media Studies include core courses, which form the foundation of study, and electives to allow the student to develop their interests according to their intellectual and career goals. As all course work is aligned with the three cornerstones of the degree -- Theory and Application, Social and Cultural Impacts, Media History and Trends -- the core program provides a theoretical and methodological foundation for critically analyzing and engaging with media in a variety of situations.

Program Student Learning Outcomes (PSLO)

Graduates of the Media Studies Program will be able to:

  1. Analyze a media topic, form, or theme from a variety of perspectives or levels of analysis. 
  2. Identify media as a mode of creating, sustaining, and reflecting individuals, cultures, communities, and organizations.
  3. Analyze ethical and power-related issues pertaining to a variety of media forms.
  4. Interpret shifts in media technology and context.

Career Opportunities

With a foundation in studies of communication, culture, and interaction, the major provides students with understandings of the types of professional discourse, work interaction, and organizational structures that shape media-related careers and products as well as human interaction with communication and media technology. The B.A. will prepare students for a variety of occupations that develop, use, and analyze media.  These include:

  • Consultant and management positions in media-intensive enterprises
  • Careers in usability, communication, and media technology interface, and social networking.
  • Positions that work with media in advertising, marketing, promotions, and public relations in departments of private, government, and public service organizations.

Preparation

High school students should take four years of English, including Composition. Social Science and Civics courses, including History and Economics, are encouraged. Familiarity with computers and the Internet is also desirable.

Transfer Students

Community college transfer students may transfer a maximum of six (6) lower-division units and must have earned a grade of C (2.0) or higher in the coursework to be counted for credit toward preparation for the major.