Students sitting around tables discussing topics in class.

The term “media” encompasses traditional conduits like music, art, literature or painting, as well as the cascade of digital experiences that have proliferated in recent decades: social media, games, films, webisodes, memes, videos and television. Today, we use media to get our news, to communicate with family, to express our identity, to escape from our troubles, and even to take classes or go to work! We often don’t think about the ways that media can be shaped for our consumption or the ways that we reflexively interpret and create media messages.

In this program, you’ll consider how meaning is derived from the media messages we encounter and create in the context of multiple perspectives—including psychology, education, cultural studies, politics, and religion. How might mediated messages perpetuate (or challenge) stereotypes and influence vulnerable populations? How can media be used to represent identity or argue for a particular view of reality? How do our own biases and experiences influence our interpretation—and sharing—of media messages?

The suite invites us to think deliberately about the media we consume, create, and encounter, rendering more visible the water we all swim in. With experiential and project-based components in each course, students will not just analyze existing media, but also produce their own projects that critique, develop, interpret, or inform others about media and meaning.

Please contact Prof. Rachel Wagner for more information.

Applications through the IC-Connect portal are now being accepted. After applying to Ithaca College you will receive your login for IC-Connect.