These courses are offered to MIT students and affiliates. More information can be found at the MIT subjects catalogue.
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Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: TR10-11.30 (VIRTUAL) or MW2-3.30 (VIRTUAL)
Offers an overview of the social, cultural, political, and economic impact of mediated communication on modern culture. Combines critical discussions with experiments working with different media. Media covered include radio, television, film, the printed word, and digital technologies. Topics include the nature and function of media, core media institutions, and media in transition. Enrollment limited.
Fall: J. Picker, I. Condry
Spring: J. Reich, P. Roquet
Textbooks (Spring 2021)
() 
Prereq: None
Units: 5-0-7
Lecture: TR11-12.30 (VIRTUAL)
Provides an introduction to the process of designing games and playful experiences. Familiarizes students with concepts, methods, techniques and tools used in the design of a wide variety of games. Focuses on aspects of the process such as rapid prototyping, play testing, and design iteration using a player-centered approach. Students work in project groups where they engage with a series of confined exercises, practice communicating design ideas, and discuss their own and others work in a constructive manner. No prior programming experience required. Limited to 15.
M. Jakobsson, S. Verrilli
No textbook information available
() 
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Same subject as ES.333[J])
Prereq: None
Units: 3-1-8
Develops communication and media skills through the production of educational videos. Students conceive, plan, script, shoot and edit video content to teach elements of MIT’s curriculum. Each student creates a series of short videos that concisely explains and contextualizes specific problems of importance to disciplines at MIT, especially physics, math, chemistry, biology, or the humanities. The resulting videos present these problems through compelling use of illustrations, demonstrations, animations, and commentary, all from the student’s perspective. Empowers students specifically to communicate their MIT expertise to communities of learners and generally to reach broad audiences with quality, accessible online content. Limited to 12; preference to students in ESG.
Staff
()
(Subject meets with CMS.839)
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: M12-3 (VIRTUAL)
Provides an overview of historical developments and current innovations in virtual reality (e.g., gear, software, and storytelling techniques) and looks into new trends in augmented, mixed and holographic reality. Includes practical instruction and a step-by-step exploration of the fundamentals of virtual reality creation – from new visual languages and grammars, to storyboarding, scripting, sound design and editing, to new and innovative ways to capture, scan and reproduce 360-degree images. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 18.
S. Rodriguez
No textbook information available
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Same subject as 21W.737[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.850)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Gives a broad understanding of what it means to produce journalism today. Evaluates the limitations and strengths of specific types of media, ranging from New York Times stories to Twitter feeds. Provides students with tools to effectively communicate their own work and research to non-specialist audiences. Students submit assignments via an online portal, which mimics the style and substance of an online news source. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 12.
S. Mnookin
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(Subject meets with CMS.861)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: TR10.30-12 (VIRTUAL)
Provides an overview of social movement studies as a body of theoretical and empirical work, with an emphasis on understanding the relationship between social movements and the media. Explores multiple methods of social movement investigation, including textual and media analysis, surveys, interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and co-research. Covers recent innovations in social movement theory, as well as new data sources and tools for research and analysis. Includes short papers, a literature review, and a final research project. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 16.
L. Partain
No textbook information available
()
Prereq: 21L.011 or CMS.100
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: MW2-3.30 (VIRTUAL)
Examines the process of making and sharing visual artifacts using a trans-cultural, trans-historical, constructionist approach. Explores the relationship between perceived reality and the narrative imagination, how an author’s choice of medium and method constrains the work, how desire is integrated into the structure of a work, and how the cultural/economic opportunity for exhibition/distribution affects the realization of a work. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided. Limited to 20.
K. Fendt
No textbook information available
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Explores the ways in which humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. Examines how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally. Describes the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Addresses questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing. Particular focus on how the sound/noise boundary is imagined, created and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples–sound art, environmental recordings, music–will be provided and invited. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided. Limited to 20.
Staff
()
(Subject meets with CMS.815)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: MW10.30-12 (VIRTUAL)
Examines how various movements have tried over time to create games that enable players to enact social change. Students collaborate in teams to design and prototype games for social change and civic engagement. In a workshop setting, teams develop games and showcase them at an end-of-term open house. Features guest speakers from academia and industry as well as the nonprofit sector and the gaming community. Readings explore principals of game design and the social history of games. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
E. Gordon
No textbook information available
() 
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with CMS.828)
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Studies and develops computational identity systems for games, social media, virtual worlds, and computer-based artwork. An interdisciplinary set of readings (cognitive science, computer science, art, and sociology) looks at both the underlying technology and the social/cultural aspects of identity. Includes topics such as developing improved characters, avatars, agents, social networking profiles, and online accounts. Engages students in on-going research projects. Explores how social categories are formed in digital media, including gender, class, and ethnicity, along with everyday social categories (such as those based on personality or shared media preferences). Experience required in one of the following: computer programming, graphic design, web development, interaction design, or social science research methods. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
Staff
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with 4.569[J], CMS.834[J])
Prereq: None
Units: 3-3-6
Explores the future of mobile interactions and pervasive computing, taking into consideration design, technological, social and business aspects. Discusses theoretical works on human-computer interaction, mobile media and interaction design, and covers research and design methods. Students work in multidisciplinary teams and participate in user-centric design projects aimed to study, imagine and prototype concepts illustrating the future of mobile applications and ubiquitous computing. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Repeatable for credit with permission of instructor. Limited to 12.
Staff
()
(Subject meets with CMS.855)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: TR2-3.30 (VIRTUAL)
Investigates the museum as a participatory public space and rethinks visitor engagement and museum education in light of digital technologies, including extended reality (XR) technologies. Students develop concepts, models, and prototypes that integrate physical and digital spaces in novel ways in close collaboration with partners at local museums. Readings provide theoretical, critical, and analytical foundations for collaborative class projects. Students taking graduate version complete additional readings and assignments.
K. Fendt
No textbook information available
()
Prereq: CMS.790
Units: 3-3-6
Lecture: M EVE (4-7 PM) (VIRTUAL) Lab: TBA
An advanced introduction to core theoretical and methodological issues in comparative media studies. Topics covered typically include globalization, propaganda and persuasion, social and political effects of media change, political economy and the institutional analysis of media ownership, online communities, privacy and intellectual property, and the role of news and information within democratic cultures.
V. Bald
No textbook information available
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with CMS.308)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Focuses on the interactions between graphic stories and media technologies from the rotary press of the late 19th century to contemporary touch screens, exploring the changing relations among narrative expression, reader experience and media form. Working with examples from Pulitzers Yellow Kid and McKays Little Nemo, through the classic comics (from DC superheroes to EC horror) and graphic novels to interactive and non-linear texts (Cognitos Operation Ajax), the course examines such elements as graphic design, interface and form as well as the circulation and economies of these various media-based texts.
J. Paradis
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with 21W.753[J], CMS.314[J])
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Engages students in theory and practice of using computational techniques for developing expressive digital media works. Surveys approaches to understanding human imaginative processes, such as constructing concepts, metaphors, and narratives, and applies them to producing and understanding socially, culturally, and critically meaningful works in digital media. Readings engage a variety of theoretical perspectives from cognitive linguistics, literary and cultural theory, semiotics, digital media arts, and computer science. Students produce interactive narratives, games, and related forms of software art. Some programming and/or interactive web scripting experience (e.g., Flash, Javascript) is desirable. Students taking the graduate version complete a project requiring more in-depth theoretical engagement.
D. F. Harrell
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with 21W.786[J], CMS.336[J])
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Explores the history and current state of social-issue documentary. Examines how cultural and political upheaval and technological change have converged at different moments to bring about new waves of activist documentary film production. Particular focus on films and other non-fiction media of the present and recent past. Students screen and analyze a series of key films and work in groups to produce their own short documentary using digital video and computer-based editing. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 18.
V. Bald
()
(Subject meets with CMS.375)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: T EVE (7-10 PM) (VIRTUAL)
Explores how climate is construed in the contemporary media in order to gain a better understanding of how views of climate change are shaped and received in the public sphere. Studies the pathways that take us from climate science to media content, from the big data of global scale to the particulars and narratives of the human experience. Surveys a variety of media forms–reports, articles, comics, videos, films, photography, poetry and fiction–that reflect on the contemporary human challenges of dealing with a changing natural environment of our own making. Emphasizes the role of media in shaping public opinion, both in the US and globally, and its influence on public (and voter) perceptions on which a vast body of regulation and funding for environmental management is based. Students work individually and in teams to produce a selection of the media forms studied. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 20.
J. Paradis
No textbook information available
(, )
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with 21W.749)
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Meets with 21W.749, but assignments differ.
Fall: B. D. Colen
Spring: B. D. Colen