New Media Studies

About

New media studies (NMS) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the processes and platforms through which the digital encoding of various media operates and circulates. New media studies also focuses on how digitally encoded media products are combined into “new” media forms, such as websites, webcasts, interactive games, graphic designs, and sales and technical information. Put simply, we study ways to both create and better understand content strategies, web and interactive design and development, and the transformation of visual and written communication on digital platforms and in digital culture more broadly.

In this sense, the Master of Arts in New Media Studies combines theoretical expertise drawn from humanities approaches with hands-on, project-based learning opportunities. 

In small core courses, working collaboratively with each other and professionally engaged faculty members, students will gain:

  • an understanding of key concepts, theories, and disciplinary conversations in the study of new media
  • a conception of the historical context of new media and its relationships to previous communication media
  • sophisticated reflection on how new media shapes rhetorical strategy, writing, and the use of images
  • the ability to produce strategically conceived content—including texts and images—for new media
  • the ability to produce a variety of new media objects (web, video, audio) using current development tools and practices
  • an understanding of the collaborative character of new media projects, and how such projects can be organized
  • the potential to compete for employment in contexts defined by new media design, production, and criticism

Students take core courses in the history and theory of media and technology, the rhetoric of design, and relationships between text and image. Courses chosen from a variety of approved electives—production and/or theory-based courses in departments across the university—round out students’ self-defined programs of study.  The program concludes with the creation of individual digital portfolios tailored to the each student’s career goals.