CSJMM’s new course descriptions
May 3, 2012 3 Comments
All students will take these courses:
Media Law and Ethics
One part of this course will focus on freedom of expression and limits to freedom of expression in a democratic society. Freedom of expression will be discussed in light of the case law of the US Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and Georgian courts. The second part of this course examines ethical issues in the Georgian and Western media, along with the codes of ethics formulated by various media outlets. Students will discuss and analyze the ethical situation in regional media.
Basic Reporting and Writing
This course will introduce students to the reporting and writing, for print and web and to the principles of good journalistic practice. Students will study and refine their interviewing, researching, and writing skills as they report in and around Tbilisi. The course will emphasize accuracy, objectivity, and critical-thinking skills. Students, successfully completing this course, will be able to report and write clear, precise, and well-organized news and feature stories, editorials, analysis pieces, and columns.
Advanced Reporting and Writing
Students will learn to report and write quality, in-depth stories that include information from multiple sources, documents and databases. They will report on two of the following four “beats”—politics, business, diversity, or conflict.
Mass Communication Theories
This course covers major theories of mass communication and it explains the role of all elements involved in the mass communication process. It helps students understand the nature of mass communications. Concepts of “mass” and “mass society” are also discussed in detail.
Research Methods
This is a course designed to introduce you to academic-quality social science research practices as conducted by mass communication scholars. It includes a focus on sampling, survey design and implementation, experimental design, and quantitative content analysis. It also reviews qualitative research methods of mass communication.
Visual Communication
There are two sections to this course: photojournalism and information graphics. You will gain an understanding of graphical communication. You will learn the skills, methods and processes that form the knowledge of communicating through graphical imagery. You will also learn about the efficiency and effectiveness of graphical communication and its ever-increasing use in our information society. You will also learn how to use a camera to report the news about people living in the immediate vicinity of GIPA for people living near GIPA.
Broadcast Journalism Basics
Students learn how to interview, gather natural sound, pick the best sound-bites, and use the video camera. They learn how to edit sound and video and structure an audio or video story. They learn how to create the critical relationship between story structure and visual structure.
Web 2.0 –Journalism and Programming
During the course students will explore and understand a core principles of Web 2.0 – the latest generation of World Wide Web. This practical course will provide them with knowledge and skills for creating interactive, simultaneous and user-generated content using blogs, wikis, web applications, video sharing and social networking sites.
Academic Writing
Students will learn the rules of academic writing, such as generating ideas for a topic, developing a purpose, considering an audience, structuring an essay, and avoiding plagiarism. In addition, students will gain an understanding of how to find the sources you need to conduct a literature review, how to analyze and synthesize the information in those sources, and how to write an integrative literature review.
Media Management Basics
The course is designed to provide students instructions on the fundamentals in successfully managing and operating a media business. It covers concepts relating to management theory, personnel motivation, organizational communication, and management’s relationship to various aspects of organizational operation.
Media Entrepreneurship
The course covers the fundamentals of strategic management and introduces students to the basics of entrepreneurship. It blends instructions in general entrepreneurship using recent news and communication startups as case studies for applying entrepreneurial principles. Students will identify, develop and pitch ideas for media businesses; Local entrepreneurs will meet with the class to discuss strategies
Students in the Journalism Track will take these four courses:
Journalism 2.0 – Journalism Content Development and Interactivity
This course will provide students with understanding of contests and transformations that World Wide Web and digital uprising brings for journalists. During the course students will learn how to deal with a rapidly chaining environment and practice effective technics of mixed-media storytelling. They will be afforded with knowledge and skills for creating multimedia content.
Visual storytelling (video production advance)
The course concentrates on storytelling tools for video journalists and documentary filmmakers who want to create powerful and engaging stories. The focus is both on story basics/structure and on their visual aspects. Students learn to tell their stories by primarily visual means. They learn about shots and their relationship with each other.
Multimedia reporting/convergent production
This is a hands-on practical course that concentrates on different stages of multimedia reporting in a real convergent newsroom. It combines and develops skills gained during previously taught journalism courses (Reporting 1,2; TV, Radio, Journalism 2 and web 2). Students create, produce and distribute the same stories on a different media platforms simultaneously.
Documentary Film Making
This course sharpens students’ research, visual storytelling, and production skills. Students will work as a one-person unit in the field – a journalist who is able to find a story, conduct an initial research, write a proposal, pitch it, and then produce a short documentary.
Students in the Media Management Track will take these four courses:
Media Content Management
This course covers concepts of evaluating, selecting, promoting, distributing, and marketing media content. Overviewing the historical theories and business practices of programming that still form the foundation of many media enterprises, the class focuses on the emergent forces in the digital media environment that have dramatically altered media business structures.
Media Sales
The course introduces students to the principles of media selling with an emphasis on ethics and including selling online advertising; students will be prepared for selling and sales management jobs at a time when media companies are cutting back in many areas except sales and where jobs are increasing, especially in the online medium.
Media Marketing
This course provides a broad understanding of marketing activities and decisions. Within the integrated marketing communications paradigm, several traditional and emerging forms of marketing communications will be discussed with an understanding that all marketing efforts of media firms should serve establishing healthy relationships with audiences, advertisers and stakeholders.
Media Economics
The course introduces concepts of fiscal problems in operation of broadcast media industries, with special emphasis on economics and financial policies. Topics that will be covered include economics of audiences and advertisers, capital markets and money flows, mergers and acquisitions, financial management, human recourses management.
All students will complete a practical project and a research paper.
Media Management Project or Multimedia Journalism Project
Media Management Master’s projects are media business development or problem-solving experiences conducted by the student as a capstone of their academic programs at the Caucuses School of Journalism and Media Management. OR Journalists are now expected to work across a range of publishing and broadcast platforms to deliver news and information. If students failed to achieve any of the program learning outcomes after taking the other courses in the MA program, this course helps them to remedy those problems. This course also helps students build a portfolio that showcases their ability to work as multimedia journalists. It also helps students to create an individual identity—or brand—for the market.
Master’s Research Paper
Students must complete a final research paper as part of their Master’s program. They must review the literature, identify an appropriate theory, collect data, analyze that data, and make appropriate conclusions.