Mass Communication Education

Mass Communication Education presents a definitive national overview of how mass communication and journalism are currently being taught in colleges and universities across America. Editors Murray and Moore and distinguished contributors offer comparative views on course content in various areas of mass media. This insightful book presents the design of courses and strategies employed, discusses what different instructors do with the same course, emphasizes new technology, and includes essays on the impact of well-known senior mentors in the field. With its emphasis on Internet and web-based material, this one-of-a-kind reference highlights important inroads and directions in each specialty. Whether they are developing new courses or reviving existing programs, instructors and administrators alike will find Mass Communication Education to be an invaluable, state-of-the-art resource

This unique volume brings together original essays by well-known mass communication experts--master teachers--who provide practical information on teaching the communication and journalism courses in which they specialize. The authors make recommendations for practical/applied, theoretical, and advanced courses, representing every area of the mass communications curriculum. Its contributors include eminent specialists such as Maurine H. Beasley, who offers advice to teachers of media history; Dan Nimmo (political communication); Roy L. Moore (media law); Jay Black (media ethics); and John De Mott (media management). Chapter authors suggest course outlines, teaching strategies, and methods of testing, and provide reviews of current texts and supplementary materials such as films and other audio-visual aids. Chapter topics in part I, The Introductory Course, include The Beginning Course in Mass Communication, and introductory courses to broadcasting, public relations, the film course, and internship programs. Part II, Applied Coursework, includes chapters on writing news for print and broadcast, reporting, advertising campaigns, audio and video production, and teaching research methods. Part III, which deals with advanced coursework, includes chapters on courses in mass communication law, mass media management, and history, mass media and politics, media criticism, and media ethics. Teaching Mass Communication will prove vitally important to faculty with new preparations for mass communication courses (including senior faculty keeping up with changes), media professionals, and new faculty preparing their teaching assignments.

Media educators have long been debating the nature and purpose of media education. Issues relating to new technologies and the changing state of the media industry are ongoing concerns, but some of the most difficult questions go to the actual structure of media education itself: Is it best represented as an integrated field? Should it merge with other communication subfields, or potentially split into several separate fields? Media practitioners complicate matters further by questioning the necessity for media education at all. The continued consideration of and reaction to these issues will have a significant effect on media-related education and its associated practices. In Mass Media Education in Transition, Thomas Dickson gives careful consideration to the state of media education and its future directions. He provides a history of mass media-related education as well as an overview of the major issues affecting media education at the end of the 20th century. He incorporates the visions of media education leaders as to the possible directions the field may take in the next century and includes in his discussion information that has been previously unknown or not readily available to media educators. This volume provides a broad view of the major issues affecting all aspects of media education: print and broadcast journalism, advertising, public relations, and media studies. It also offers detailed insights as to the possibilities that lie ahead as the field continues to develop--a new professionalism, or a return to a prior vision of media-related education, or possibly something quite different.

In this critical examination of the beginnings of mass communications research in the United States, written from the perspective of an educational historian, Timothy Glander uses archival materials that have not been widely studied to document, contextualize, and interpret the dominant expressions of this field during the time in which it became rooted in American academic life, and tries to give articulation to the larger historical forces that gave the field its fundamental purposes. By mid-century, mass communications researchers had become recognized as experts in describing the effects of the mass media on learning and other social behavior. However, the conditions that promoted and sustained their authority as experts have not been adequately explored. This study analyzes the ideological and historical forces giving rise to, and shaping, their research. Until this study, the history of communications research has been written almost entirely from within the field of communications studies and, as a result, has tended to refrain from asking troubling foundational questions about the origins of the field or to entertain how its emergence shaped educational discourse during the post-World War II period. By examining the intersection between the individual biographies of key leaders in the communications field (Wilbur Schramm, Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, Hadley Cantril, Stuart Dodd, and others) and the larger historical context in which they lived and worked, this book aims to tell part of the story of how the field of communications became divorced from the field of education. The book also examines the work of significant voices on the rise of mass communications study (including C. Wright Mills, William W. Biddle, Paul Goodman, and others) who theorized about the emergence of a mass society. It concludes with a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the theory of a mass society to educational thought and practice.

This unique volume brings together original essays by well-known mass communication experts--master teachers--who provide practical information on teaching the communication and journalism courses in which they specialize. The authors make recommendations for practical/applied, theoretical, and advanced courses, representing every area of the mass communications curriculum. Its contributors include eminent specialists such as Maurine H. Beasley, who offers advice to teachers of media history; Dan Nimmo (political communication); Roy L. Moore (media law); Jay Black (media ethics); and John De Mott (media management). Chapter authors suggest course outlines, teaching strategies, and methods of testing, and provide reviews of current texts and supplementary materials such as films and other audio-visual aids. Chapter topics in part I, The Introductory Course, include The Beginning Course in Mass Communication, and introductory courses to broadcasting, public relations, the film course, and internship programs. Part II, Applied Coursework, includes chapters on writing news for print and broadcast, reporting, advertising campaigns, audio and video production, and teaching research methods. Part III, which deals with advanced coursework, includes chapters on courses in mass communication law, mass media management, and history, mass media and politics, media criticism, and media ethics. Teaching Mass Communication will prove vitally important to faculty with new preparations for mass communication courses (including senior faculty keeping up with changes), media professionals, and new faculty preparing their teaching assignments.

When it comes to teaching about race, journalism and mass communication faculty from various backgrounds must deliver instruction that acknowledges the challenges surrounding the topic while facilitating the learning of undergraduate and graduate students. Race should be a topic infused across the curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level in institutions large and small, public and private. This takes a holistic approach with authors from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds at small, mid-size, and large research institutions offering their insights. More than teaching tips, the chapters here offer wisdom grounded in the research of the scholarship of teaching and learning, which allows scholars to both inform their teaching with empirical research and share successful pedagogy with others.

This volume provides an overview of communication study, offering theoretical coverage of the broad scope of communication study as well as integrating theory with research. To explicate the integration process, the chapter contributors -- experts in their respective areas -- offer samples in the form of hypothetical studies, published studies, or unpublished research, showing how theory and research are integrated in their particular fields. The book will appeal to graduate students and faculty members who want a thorough overview of not only the field, but also sample research stemming from its various component parts.

Updated in its eleventh edition, The Media of Mass Communication engages readers in the pursuit of greater media literacy and provides accessible insight into the important issues that confront students as consumers and purveyors of mass media. Through exceptional coverage of contemporary media issues and trends, including the on-going transformations in mass media, this text balances the principles and foundations of media literacy with lively examples, streamlined coverage, and a robust media package.