Program Overview

Public Media (PMMA) Program

The Public Media (PMMA) program offers a comprehensive curriculum that explores the role of media in promoting positive social change. The program is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of the theoretical and practical aspects of public media, including journalism, strategic communication, and digital media.

Course Descriptions

The program includes a wide range of courses that cover various aspects of public media, including:

• PMMA 5001: Public Interest Media Theory and Practice: This course examines the central topics in the study and practice of media in the public interest, including the role of media in promoting social change and the unique roles of journalists and strategic communication professionals.
• PMMA 5002: Public Journalism: This hands-on course teaches students how to operate effectively as a multimedia reporter for public or nonprofit media in a converged media world.
• PMMA 5003: Strategic Communication: This course explores the study of strategic communication in the contemporary world, with a focus on how strategic communication can be used to advance social justice and the public interest.
• PMMA 5101: Freedom of Expression: This course examines the history and theory of freedom of expression in the United States, including the philosophical and political origins of free speech and the role of government in regulating expression.
• PMMA 5103: Environment and the Media: This course explores the unique contributions that perspectives from communication and media theory can bring to the study of the environment and introduces students to essential challenges in climate change storytelling.
• PMMA 5105: Digital Technology and Ethics: This course aims to equip students with the skills and knowledge to contribute critically and constructively to cross-disciplinary discussions on the impact of digital technology on society.
• PMMA 5106: Race, Gender, and Digital Media: This course examines the theory, history, politics, and aesthetics of digital media, utilizing an intersectional feminist approach to explore race, gender, and broader questions of identity and difference.
• PMMA 5107: Media and Sexuality: This course critically examines the terms of new visibility for sexuality and LGBTQ representation in the media, inquiring into the exclusions that accompany the recognition of certain queer and trans subjects.
• PMMA 5202: Digital Media and Social Responsibility: This course examines the choices and responsibilities that shape personal identity and common humanity for those who regularly employ the tools of digital media and computer technology.
• PMMA 5203: Technology & Public Comm: This course focuses on the study of technology in the context of public communication, exploring the role that media, technology, and symbol systems play in shaping communication, consciousness, and culture.
• PMMA 5204: Civic Media: This course explores how digital tools can increase and improve civic engagement, covering case studies of many genres of civic media, from open data and hackathons to tech for development, interactive art and design in public space, games for good, and more.
• PMMA 5206: Social Media and Political Campaigns: This course leads students in analyzing the practices, strategies, and tactics of contemporary campaigning, focusing on the role of social media in political campaigns and its impact on traditional theories of political communication.
• PMMA 5207: Mapping Injustice: This course centers on the theme of mapping as an organizing concept for understanding and engaging social justice and injustice, exploring how spatial media can help draw together dichotomies such as medium/method, art/science, and ontology/epistemology.
• PMMA 5208: Digital Media and Migration Justice: This course offers an introduction to the border technologies and biometric data entailed in the U.S. immigration ecosystem, exploring how digital media could help address the injustices faced by immigrants through critical advocacy for their rights, well-being, and dignity.
• PMMA 6101: Audio Narrative (Reporting and Production): This course teaches students how to produce audio narrative with public media values, focusing on the fundamentals of strong audio narrative, including quality sound gathering, strong interview techniques, writing for the ear, and authentic vocal delivery.
• PMMA 6102: Video Narrative (Reporting and Production): This course is a workshop for students who want to elevate their skills in creating videos that have strong storylines and exhibit best practices in reporting and production.
• PMMA 6104: Alternative and Advocacy Journalism: This course teaches students how to produce, aggregate, and disseminate journalistic content with the explicit goal of making disadvantaged communities better informed, connected to one another, and able to influence policy decisions.
• PMMA 6107: Opinion Writing: This course explores the great American tradition of opinion writing and commentary in traditional print and evolving online formats, aiming to gain an understanding of contemporary social, professional, and intellectual concerns in the practice of journalism.
• PMMA 6108: Advanced Interviews and Profiles: This course teaches students advanced reporting and profile writing for different multimedia journalism platforms, with a heavy emphasis on the art of interviewing.
• PMMA 6111: Advanced Writing and Enterprise Reporting: This advanced course builds upon PMMA 5002, Public Journalism, to continue students' development as writers and reporters, focusing on driving students towards a professional level in their writing, interviewing, and narrative choices.
• PMMA 6203: Marketing, Branding, & Fundraising in the Public Interest: This course offers a strategic framework for developing a social media advocacy campaign, using social and digital media to help shape public debate, mobilize public action, and speak directly to those with influence to help bring about social change.
• PMMA 6204: Social Media Strategy for Non-Profits: This course helps students build the fundamental skills needed for digital professional roles in nonprofits, NGOs, and corporate philanthropy, including effective writing for social media, strategies for engagement, community management, and professional measurement.
• PMMA 6206: Persuasion and Public Opinion: This course blends theory and practice to explore how we convince others to change their attitudes or behavior in order to accomplish specified goals, working in multiple contexts to help students become better analysts and evaluators of persuasive messages.
• PMMA 6207: Global Media and Communication: This course aims to provide students with an international perspective to better understand communication theories and practices in different parts of the world, combining conceptual learning and class projects to help students gain both a theoretical foundation and firsthand research experience about international communication.
• PMMA 6208: Data and Communication: This course explores a wide range of data-based communications, ranging from campaign strategy to data journalism and advertising tactics, featuring hands-on practice and examples to help students develop essential skills for communication professionals in the 21st century.
• PMMA 6209: Storytelling for Public Good: This course focuses on how to craft stories that inform, mobilize, or persuade, and ultimately serve the public interest, paying special attention to the role of narrative in both journalism and advocacy and changing channels of storytelling.
• PMMA 6210: Cross Platform Production: This course provides students with a variety of production skills for media-oriented professions, including shooting and editing for sound, still image, and video, with an eye toward editing for a variety of digital platforms.
• PMMA 6211: Public and Media Relations for Nonprofits: This course deepens students' understanding of how nonprofit organizations undertake internal and external communication, teaching students to create advocacy and nonprofit-specific content, including press releases, op-ed pieces, and newsletters.
• PMMA 6212: Digital Media and Advocacy: This course focuses on how two broad types of advocacysocial movements and campaignswork in a digital age, helping students develop skills that will apply to nonprofit advocacy, community organizing, electoral campaigning, and activism broadly speaking.
• PMMA 6213: Public Interest Branding Workshop: This applied, workshop-based course covers how to articulate a brand, how to center a brand for an organization, and how to use a brand to build effective, long-lasting, cross-platform marketing campaigns in the public interest.
• PMMA 6214: Codes and Modes of Communication: This course explores the different ways in which human beings send messages and make meaning, with an emphasis on pragmatic approaches to the process of communication, clarity, and effective communication, leadership, and critical thinking.
• PMMA 6215: Interactive Digital Storytelling: This course introduces students to the tools and techniques of interactive storytelling in the public interest, combining research, media production, and computer programming to present findings as web-based interactive audiovisual media content.
• PMMA 6216: Communicating Criminal Justice: This course helps students prepare for work involving advocacy or journalism by exploring the criminal justice system, with a focus on the role of communication, and presenting an overview of policing, justice, and incarceration and the information streams each part of the criminal justice system creates.
• PMMA 6217: Messaging to Make a Difference: This course teaches students the art and science of crafting messages for social good that attract donors, advocates, employees, volunteers, and ultimately media attention, exploring the theoretical foundations of effective messaging and developing creative capacity through hands-on projects and real-world case studies.

Internships and Special Projects

The program also offers various internship and special project opportunities, including:

• PMMA 6397: Summer Internship: This internship is chosen by the student, working in conjunction with the graduate director, and is supervised by an appropriate faculty member.
• PMMA 6398: Internship: This internship is also chosen by the student, working in conjunction with the graduate director, and is supervised by an appropriate faculty member.
• PMMA 6399: Internship II: Students have the possibility to do an internship for three credits per semester, for a total of up to six credits for the program.
• PMMA 6619: Special Master's Project: This course represents the culmination of the student's course of study, where the student creates a final project based on projected future plans and career path.
• PMMA 8999: Independent Study: This course allows students to pursue independent study under the supervision of a faculty member.