Mediawork

Mediawork is a Cognitive Science class taught by James Miller.

Course Description
The content of popular media--news, feature films, recorded music--is the product of people's labor. Bringing specialized skills to bear on complex technology, usually in the context of a formal organization, media workers create cultural products on an almost continuous basis. This course explores this process of cultural production, with a focus on the division of labor among media workers. Students will study selected media industry sectors, such as journalism, motion pictures, book publishing and popular music. The goal will be to understand the distribution of power and authority in the content production process. This may require some attention to the structure of media ownership and the legacy of organized labor. But mainly students will investigate the actual work and production routines that result in media content. Students will write a couple of essays and a longer final paper.

Learning Goals

 * Project-based
 * Presenting
 * Reading
 * Writing