This course is an overview of the major components of human communication, including interpersonal, mass, group, and public communication. An examination of the forms of communication elements such as spoken, written, non-verbal and cultural, which interact in ways that can be deliberate and explicit in their intent, as well as sub-conscious and unintended. The course will also emphasize the practical personal and professional value of understanding and improving one's own communication capacities. The course will reflect on the influence of sociology, psychology, linguistics, and other disciplines on the study of communication, as well as the history of the communication field itself.

This course is an overview of the nature, structure, and function of communication and mass media. Students learn of the media has developed into a powerful social, political, and economic force in society. This course draws on the history of the various media industries to illuminate current trends, influences on media content, industry regulations and new technologies. Special consideration is given to theory-based perspectives on media, and the ethics of various media practices.

This course will be your gateway to the exciting and evolving world of journalism. It is practical, designed to teach you to think like a journalist, analyze and critique the news media and introduce you to basic writing, reporting, interviewing and editing skills and habits. In this class, you will work as a journalist, learning the ingredients of news and news-gathering as well as how to tell stories across media platforms (print, radio, television, digital and social media) in our ever-changing era of 21st-century media disruption and convergence. You will learn how to cover a variety of people, places, things, events and issues, as well as discuss and understand the importance of news and media literacy. Above all, you will write, write, edit and write some more.

This course provides students with an opportunity for learning pre-production, production, and post-production elements of a successful broadcast, and trains students in the written and vocal techniques of broadcast performance. Students will report and deliver news as field reporters, producing video and audio news packages.

Perhaps no other skill or competency is as critical to our success in life-personally or professionally-than the ability to communicate effectively. This course is an introduction to speaking before groups and includes techniques of speech preparation and delivery, adapting to the purpose of the speaking situation, and practice in various types of oral presentation in a comfortable workshop atmosphere. A special emphasis will be placed on giving and receiving criticism.

This course develop the skills needed to be an effective media writer. The class will examine media writing across a variety of genres and mediums, preparing students to write for print and broadcast journalism, public relations, advertising, and other formats.

This course introduces students to the theory, strategy, and practical writing skills associated with public relations practice. Students will be exposed to different forms and styles of public relations writing and gain an understanding of message development, placement, and evaluation. By the end of this course, students will have created a portfolio of professional writing samples.

Students will explore media forms such as commercials, public service announcements, movie scenes, documentaries, and music videos. Skills learned will include pre-production planning and writing, production, post-production, camera techniques, equipment use, video editing and graphics, and sound editing. Additional emphasis in this course will be media literacy and digital citizenship, encouraging students to think critically to analyze current media forms as well as media industry practices.

This course focuses on the nature of conflict in a variety of relational contexts. A combination of theory and application assists students in mastering skills of dispute resolution and management of conflict. Special emphasis is placed on analyzing and understanding conflict in our lives. Case studies and simulations facilitate the learning of strategies and tactics used in the processes of bargaining, negotiation, and mediation.

This course will exam free speech and 1st amendment issues from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Students will examine and discuss supreme court rulings, and make meaningful connections to current freedom of speech debates as they relate to public communication.

At the heart of science communication research is a desire to understand the role of communication in how individuals and society attempt to manage complex issues, as well as how those charged with communicating science can do so in an effective way. This course will examine successes and failures in science communication, with consideration of issues in the public arena including civic engagement, political communication, and health campaigns.

This course will engage students in studying and using media as a tool for effecting social and political change. We will analyze activist, alternative, civil society- and community-based media practices and mobilizing strategies against the backdrop of theoretical concepts such as hegemony, cultural imperialism, civil society, social movements, and political discourse; and explore how alternative and participatory media-makers have intervened in public discourse to advocate for freedom, justice and equality. We'll look at important historical and contemporary case studies in media activism that have expanded participatory public dialogue, from community radio and the radical press to hacktivism, culture jamming, hashtag activism, social media campaigns, data activism, and electronic civil disobedience. Students will engage with the material through both scholarship and practice. Selected readings from scholars, artists, and activists will provide background and analysis of the history, theory, and methods of creative activism. This class will also provide significant opportunities for students to gain direct experience learning and using a variety of emerging practices incorporating digital, analog, and social media in the development of their own activist campaigns.

Examines theory and research related to the communication of health, environmental, agricultural, technological, and nutritional risks. It provides a conceptual understanding of the fundamental issues that influence the relationships between risk communicators and the public. It looks at risk communication from multiple perspectives, including psychological, social, organizational, and cultural. The course will emphasize understanding, applying, and developing theories of risk communication. It encourages you to think critically about risk communication as a dynamic process. After taking this course, students should be familiar with the major theories related to risk and crisis communication, and have an appreciation for how these theories relate to the practice of risk communication.

Drawing on examples from the media, the arts, and popular culture, this course will interrogate the many ways that constructions of "health," "disease," "illness," and "normal" or "abnormal" bodies have typically been confined to limited and limiting social, political, and aesthetic categories. The regimes of representation in media (art, music, literature, theater, film, episodic series, news media, social media, and popular culture in general) reflect and shape cultural understandings of nonconforming identities and extraordinary bodies, affecting the lived experience of people understood as afflicted or abnormal in profound and practical ways. Because these media embody a fluid ability for infinite interpretation, they provide a powerful stage to explore illness, health, disease, and the medicalized body, as well as their meaning at multiple levels-from the individual to the collective, the private to the public, the symbolic to the literal. The class will also explore a significant counter-tradition in which the "abnormal" and even the "diseased" are represented as powerful identities, as well as a radical aesthetic and political tactic at work in visual culture. Intersectionality is a critical component of this course as we consider how a multiplicity of power structures effect, oppress, and produce complex embodiment; that is, the discourses of health/illness and normal/abnormal do not exist without discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and religion. Students will learn to analyze critically the public arguments of science and medicine as depicted in media and popular culture, and to articulate how scientific and medical discourses have been used, historically, to harm, disenfranchise, and kill "abnormal" or "inferior" others.

This course will allow students the opportunity to gain experience in a mass media or communication-related field setting wherein they can build upon their in-class learning experiences. Student learning will be geared toward advancing skills and knowledge through placement in an alternative setting that enables students to develop their professional networking, while further evaluating their educational and career goals. Through agreement among the instructor/internship coordinator, the student, and the internship supervisor, the student will participate in an internship(s) for a minimum of 225 hours for the semester (~ 15 hours per week).

This seminar will provide a forum for students to demonstrate their mastery of the communication program content, and reflect on their experiences at D'Youville. Students will produce a comprehensive portfolio, and report on their internship experiences. Additional focus will be geared toward career pursuits, and life beyond college. Students can expect regular discussion, coupled with student-led presentations.