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Pluralistic audiences are of special interest to Newhouse students; regardless of your area of interest, you will work with, communicate with, and serve people from a variety of backgrounds. Effective public communication depends on knowing and understanding your audience, which means knowing and understanding histories and cultures that you may be unfamiliar with.
This course is an introduction of fundamental issues of diversity that confront media workers and audiences designed to expose you to a wide variety of issues concerning the media and “categories of difference.” We will discuss roles, obligations, stereotypes, ownership of media in a multicultural society, as well as the connections between human psychology and the media’s portrayal of specific groups to explicate the impact of media, social power, and what this means for media production and reception.
You will leave the course with a better appreciation for how people with different backgrounds, life experiences, and cultural competencies often have different and valid perspectives. Using this awareness of the validity of differing perspectives, you should be more mindful media consumers and more ethical and inclusive media producers.
