Media Studies
Stop. Look around. Listen. Feel. What types of media are in front of you, around you, and beyond you? What role do they play in how you know yourself, express yourself, relate to other people, and make your way in the world? Where did these media come from and how do they even work?
If you’re curious about questions like these, then Media Studies is for you.
Here you’ll discover that media shape your everyday life; how you think, feel, act, create, and even the communities you are a part of.
Imagine how disoriented you would be—spatially, temporally, and socially—if you lost your mobile phone. Think about how much your experience of learning has been shaped by tablets and laptops, cloud services and screens, and older media like pencils and chalkboards. Or consider how your sense of belonging is affected by TV shows either portraying or neglecting to portray people like you.
If we don’t know what media are doing, then do we understand what we are doing?
Students and faculty in the Department of Media Studies explore how all types of media affect key elements of daily life including law, culture, and politics, and how media are affected by them in return. For us, media literacy is just the beginning. Together we recognize “the media” as consisting of a diverse array of content, technologies, institutions, and people, and as sources of both pleasure and power. Our mission is to empower you to become a more reflexive, effective, and creative inhabitant of our mediated world.
Undergraduate Opportunities
Our Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies emphasizes the creative and analytical skills needed to make sense of current and future trends in media and to gain a deep understanding of the history and development of various means and forms of communication.
Interdisciplinary experience
Explorations of media theory, history, criticism, practices, popular culture, technology and emerging cultures are enhanced by the access to all the departments within the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information, giving you opportunities for practical training in media design, storytelling, digital art, information science, documentary filmmaking and journalism.
Practical training
You’ll gain conceptual, technical and practical skills in media analysis, production and management, but you’ll also learn to think critically about the creation, distribution and reception of contemporary and emergent media cultures across a global context.
Learn more about:
Media Studies Minor
The minor in Media Studies (MDST) allows students to choose from among a wide array course offerings, which focuses on contemporary media topics in one of three recommended concentrations:
- Media, Technology and Society
- Global Media Industries and Culture
- Advocacy, Entrepreneurship and Social Change
Graduate Programs
In the Department of Media Studies, graduate students work with faculty to design a program of study that fits their individual interests by taking advantage of the expertise and intellectual opportunities offered within the department, CMDI and other academic programs on campus. Our faculty provide an environment in which graduate students receive optimal opportunity for study, research, teaching and the production of creative work.
The department’s scholarly and teaching interests focus on the cultural, social, economic, political and discursive environments in which communication systems, industries, texts and audiences operate. We examine national, international and global media institutions; the role, development and evolution of communication and information technologies; the political economy behind media content production; the nature and effects of media representations and the way media issues create publics and counterpublics. We investigate how various communities receive, interact with, interpret and produce media texts and address these interests from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches.
The Department offers two main graduate tracks within Media Studies:
The MA in Media and Public Engagement (MAPE) is a 2-year immersion in the practice and theory of media advocacy. It offers critical study of the history, institutions, economics and social implications of the media, nationally and globally, combined with a practice-based media training geared toward civic engagement and community building. In addition to completing courses in media theory and other fields of interest, students will have the opportunity to create thoughtful and engaging projects using a variety of media practices including documentary film, multimedia websites, interactive video installations and digital platforms.
In their two years in the program, MAPE students will collaborate with faculty, community leaders, nonprofit organizations and socially engaged corporations to devise innovative pathways to the study, commentary and presentation of social issues. They may also choose to focus on environmental issues and complete the Graduate Certificate in Environment, Policy and Society (EPS), which consists of 18 credit hours met by taking courses both inside and outside CMDI.
Learn more about:
The PhD in Media Studies is a distinct track within the umbrella PhD in Media Research and Practice (MDRP). Drawing largely from contemporary cultural and critical theory, the Media Studies PhD program focuses on interactions among the major components of modern communication — media institutions, their contents and messages, and their audiences or publics — as a process by which cultural meaning is generated. It examines that process on an interdisciplinary basis through social, economic, political, historical, legal/policy/regulatory and international perspectives, with a strong emphasis on issues involving new communication technology and policy.
Learn more about:
The MA in Media and Public Engagement
Think & Act
Faculty Bios
Media Studies Alumni
- Don Heider (PhD'97)
Dean, School of Communication, Loyola University - Lynn Clark (PhD'98)
Director, Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media, University of Denver - Jennifer Phurrough Bagg ('00)
Partner, communication and regulatory law, Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP - Mark Andrejevic (PhD ’01)
Chair and associate professor of Media Studies at Pomona College - Piya Sorcar ('01)
Founder/CEO of TeachAIDS education software - Helga Tawil-Souri (PhD'05)
Director, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, NYU Steinhardt - Daniel Mercado ('09)
PR/marketing consultant, Ogilvy, United Arab Emirates - Rolando Perez (MA'09)
Professor, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru - Amy Jesse (MA'10)
Public policy coordinator, Humane Society of the United States
Careers in Media Studies
- Media production
- Film and television critic
- Government agencies
- Industry researcher
- Nonprofit organizations
- Higher education
- Law
- Media scholar
Contact the Department of Media Studies
Media Studies
Armory 203
1511 University Ave.
University of Colorado Boulder
UCB 478
Boulder, CO 80309-0478
303-492-5163