University of Minnesota
JOUR 1001: Media in a Changing World
Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, H: Fall 2023, Fall 2024
This introductory undergraduate class takes a survey approach to examine our definitions of “the media” and how they function. We compare across a wide range of media industries to understand the common and the unique challenges in these different spaces, with particular attention to how our media environment is constantly evolving. This course is required for students interested in applying for the Hubbard School.
JOUR / POL 3786: Media and Politics
Fall 2022
This cross-listed undergraduate course explores the complicated relationship between the media, political actors (including both politicians, advocacy groups, and organizations), and members of the public to consider its implications for society. We consider “politics” broadly in terms of issues of broad societal concern and think critically about how these actors cooperate and compete in democratic societies. We pay special attention to the ethical questions surrounding these relationships and how they have evolved over time.
JOUR 4501: Communication, Public Opinion, and Social Media
Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2026 (formerly JOUR 5501)
This upper-level undergraduate course focuses on how we define, measure, and shape public opinion. We consider the role of the media both in producing public opinion and it reflecting its representation. We examine how our methods of measuring public opinion – especially using surveys – alter our interpretation of opinion “is.” We also examine how the rise of social media complicates traditional ways of understanding and measuring opinion.
JOUR 8501: Research Methods in Mass Communication
Fall 2020, Fall 2025
This graduate level research class is required of most of our incoming graduate students. In this class, we develop the fundamental skills of research design: of picking the right research method to answer the research questions we identify from our review of existing literature. We emphasize the value of mixed methods approaches to research by providing an overview of a wide range of approaches to communication research, including surveys, experiments, qualitative interviews, focus groups, and textual analysis.
JOUR 8504: Analyzing Media Content
Fall 2019
This graduate level class focuses in-depth on a single research method: content analysis. This class offers both theoretical and practical experience in performing content analysis by encouraging students to work as individuals or in a group to perform a unique data analysis throughout the semester.
JOUR 8661: Mediated Political Communication in the Digital Age
Fall 2022
This graduate course offers a foundation in defining political communication, with a special emphasis on the ways in which digital media have fundamentally redefined the ways in which political actors communicate with diverse stakeholders. This is a seminar-style class, prioritizing interaction and conversation among students and the instructor based on the course materials and making connections to students’ individual interests. This course is a required class in the Political Psychology minor. The last time I taught this class (in Fall of 2022), we used a book-club style approach to read 13 books throughout the class – it was a lot of fun and I hope to use a similar approach in the future!
JOUR 8990: Digital Media, Misinformation, and Trust
Spring 2025
From birtherism to QAnon, from September 11th to COVID-19 denialism, from violent mobs fueled by WhatsApp rumors to organized influence campaigns led by state actors worldwide, many increasingly see the digital media landscape as awash in misinformation, deliberate falsehoods, and conspiracy theories. This graduate-level course will examine cutting edge conceptual, empirical, and methodological advances around the study of changing media and the role played by misinformation, disinformation, media manipulation, trust, and partisan polarization in shaping contemporary beliefs and behaviors.
Scholarship focusing on these matters has been scattered across multiple disciplines including psychology, political science, communication, economics, public health, and sociology, drawing on a range of approaches including computational tracking studies, surveys, experiments, qualitative interviews, and critical theorizing. This interdisciplinary seminar seeks to synthesize across these areas of the social sciences and take an in-depth look at three spheres of research: (1) literature on information exposure including studies focusing on how news and rumor flow and reverberate across different media ecologies; (2) information processing including research into how people receive, interpret, and reason about what they are exposed to; and (3) information effects or the consequences of these dynamics on attitudes and behaviors (political, social, and health-related) and future media practices such as news avoidance and selective exposure.
George Mason University
COMM302: Introduction to Mass Communication
Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2015
COMM302 is an introductory course in the School of Communication designed to familiarize students with many major communication theories. This class emphasizes developing an understanding of media effects, paying special attention to the relationships between the producers and consumers of mediated content. Further, we begin to explore how these relationships are evolving in with our media landscape and the implications for democratic society.
[Recent syllabus]
COMM400: Communication Research Methods
Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
COMM400 is a required course for any communication majors and is usually taken by upper-level students before graduation. The class is designed to help students obtain the basic knowledge and fundamental skills of communication research. This course emphasizes a “learning by doing” approach, with students working in groups to complete a semester-long project in which students design their own research project, collect and analyze data, and produce a final research presentation and report.
[Recent syllabus]
COMM432: Political Communication
Spring 2015
COMM432 is an upper-level undergraduate course for students interested in how communication between members of the public, the media, advocacy groups, and politicians shape democratic society. It is a required course for the Political Communication concentration or minor. While the class covers political campaigns, it is more focused on the everyday interactions between citizens, the media, and political advocates in U.S. society and their implications for cultural, social, and policy issues. The course emphasizes discussion and application of theories of political communication to real-world events.
[Recent Syllabus]
COMM650: Graduate Communication Research Methods
Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016
COMM650 is a required course for all incoming graduate students. To better emphasize the importance of triangulation across multiple methods, this course contains four modules: an introduction to communication research methods, a qualitative session, a quantitative session, and a concluding session, which culminates in students presenting the multi-method research project with qualitative and quantitative elements that they have developed in groups all semester. I co-taught the class with Dr. Kevin Wright, who led the qualitative sessions while I led the quantitative sessions.
[Syllabus]
COMM750: Research Methods II
Fall 2013
This graduate course picks up where COMM650 leaves off, focusing on developing a deeper understanding of quantitative methods. In the course, we pay special attention to the unique methodological concerns that arise when dealing with secondary data sources, including understanding its merits and limitations, new sampling methodologies, and variable measurement. The course emphasizes regression methods for analyzing large datasets.
[Syllabus]
COMM690: New Media and Democracy
Spring 2014, Spring 2017
This graduate course in new media and democracy was my favorite class at Mason. I taught the course in a largely seminar style, leaving a lot of time for class discussion of the topics. As part of the course, we considered how the changing media environment affects democratic functioning, with an emphasis on the increased role of audience agency in choosing their news sources, learning and contributing to issues of public debate and policy, and participating in the political process. We also touch on the ethical considerations that arise with these new opportunities, including privacy concerns, media literacy, and digital divides.
[Recent syllabus]
The George Washington University
SMPA 2120: Public Opinion
Spring 2012
A required class for all students in the political communication major in the Department of Media and Public Affairs, this three-credit course consisted mostly of seniors and juniors. This class dealt with the underpinnings of attitude formation and change, the process of political decision-making, and the role of the media and audience in these decisions.