New Courses for Spring 2010

SIS 628.004     Yael Warshel
Communication for Social Change
This course serves to introduce students to measures for assessing and evaluating the impact of communication campaign intervention messages for social change. Particular focus will be placed on the assessment and evaluation of peace communication campaigns that try to resolve ethnopolitical conflict by changing individual and group-level behaviors. Students will learn the skills necessary for making sense of contradictory research findings, developing their own research designs, and making policy recommendations. Course draws upon, and is applicable to, political communication, health communication and development communication.

New Courses for Spring 2009

SIS 628.016 (Meets with 496.TBA)       Gabriel Weimann
Theater of Terror: Modern Terrorism & the Mass Media
Modern terrorism relies on the mass media for publicity, recognition, psychological impact, political achievements and other purposes. This course examines the relationships between modern terrorists and the mass media, how terrorists use the media, the recent presence of terrorists on the Internet and the threat of cyberterrorism, how democracies can respond to the challenge, and the social and political cost of various measures.

SIS 628.012 (meets with SIS 496.012)       Craig Hayden
Global Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, Media, and Information Politics
This class provides an introduction to comparative public diplomacy programs, new media public diplomacy initiatives, and how media outlets are leveraged by NGOs and religious extremist organizations to influence global public opinion.

SIS 628.017 (meets with SIS 496.017)       Elizabeth Fox
Health Communication in Developing Countries
A semester-length course on communication for health would build on the topics presented in the Skills Institute. It would add four additional areas: 1) an examination of policies for communication for health and development, including public/private sector incentives, 2) an analysis of the relationships of communication for health with print and broadcast media, including community media, 4) information technologies development in health communication, and 3) journalist training and ethics for health communication.

SIS 628.015 (meets with SIS 496.015)       Nanette Levinson
Communication, Culture & Social Entrepreneurship
This professional practicum addresses the evolving field of social entrepreneurship: using social entrepreneurial approaches that can complement more traditional NGO approaches to bringing about change in developing and developed nations. It is designed for graduate students interested in nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, governments, philanthropies, or private sector organizations with a social purpose.

Topics include: Entrepreneurship, Change and the Media, Public-private Partnerships, Culture, Communication and Sustainable Positive Change. Using case studies and teamwork, students engage with the opportunities and challenges and either design their own social entrepreneurial organization or analyze an existing organization or alliance designed to make a difference in a wide array of impact areas including poverty alleviation, human rights, health, housing, relief, sanitation, conflict resolution, technical assistance or communication.