Comm 489W - Advanced Telecommunications Topics: Children and Media

Comm 489W.002 Adv. Telecommunications Topics: Children and Media (27325)
Professor Yael Warshel
Tue - Thur 10:35 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. 24 Carnegie        

Comm 489W.003 Adv. Telecommunications Topics: Children and Media (27326)
Professor Yael Warshel
Tue-Thur 1:35 p.m. - 2:50 p.m. 24 Carnegie 

This course introduces students to the role media play in the lives of children and youth living in challenging contexts worldwide where often times no media exist that represent or engage them. The course will be framed from the perspective of exploring their media uses, namely that of a globally disenfranchised population. The course will explore opportunities to advance social justice and give voice to the opinions of these children and youth.

By doing so, the course will explore children’s culture, daily lives, leisure practices, non-formal education and how they use, interpret and create low tech and high tech media within zones of conflict, inequality and poverty where telecommunication markets operate unevenly or not at all, and where finding ways to bridge these gaps pose ethical challenges for telecomm operators seeking to expand into untapped and/or social change relevant markets. To achieve its learning outcomes, the course adopts a comparative framework, exploring whether children’s practices are universal, or differ across cultures.

Students will leave the course with knowledge of the major debates and skills requisite for conducting media uses and practices research within such contexts. Sample questions to be addressed include, “Globally, are youth passive receivers or active interpreters and producers of media?,” “What role do digital games and playgrounds hold in the lives of refugee children?,” “What did protests through Facebook, rap, graffiti and other media by youth across Africa and the Middle East tell us about their political opinions?,” “How do children develop stereotypes about one another, their concepts of national identity and citizenship?,” And finally, “Are the processes by which children and youth consume media and adapt to living amid violence universal, or do they differ across cultures?”

Students interested in telecommunications and media studies and/or who have an interdisciplinary interest in anthropology; geography; social psychology; child development; information sciences and technology, comparative and international education; children’s literature; and African, Middle Eastern and/or other area studies methodologies should find this course of interest.

For more information on this course, contact assistant professor of telecommunications Yael Warshel.