Instead of one major with five concentrations—film, media culture & society, new media/participatory media, journalism, and TV & radio—the department has created four distinct majors:
-Communication and Culture;
-Digital Technologies and Emerging Media;
-Film and Television; and
-Journalism.
These majors can also be chosen as minors, and an additional minor in Sports Journalism is also being offered.
Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., chair of the department, said the media industry has changed significantly since the former curriculum was instituted. The department surveyed 79 peer, aspirant, local, and Jesuit universities to get a sense of how other communications departments were structured, and of their curriculum offerings. They also reached out to students, faculty outside the department, and administrators for input.
Reich said the change from concentrations to majors reflects a desire to give students a better balance between theory and practice. The two introductory courses that all communications majors had been required to take have been combined into one course. Students can now take up to nine courses in their area of specialization, instead of three.
For example, said Reich, a student who wants to concentrate on film has to take courses on understanding film, the history of film until 1950, and film theory and criticism. In addition, they’d have a practical requirement, consisting of a course on screenwriting or digital video production. If they want to be film historians, they can concentrate heavily on film history courses; if they want to focus on filmmaking, they can take more hands-on courses.
To make such specializations possible, said Reich, the department is debuting several new courses, including Data Visualization, Hacker Culture, Political Communication in the Digital Era, Writing the Original TV Pilot, and Social Media for Journalists.
Reich said that what makes the program stand out from other universities is an emphasis on ethics, and promoting “media with a mission.”
“One thing we looked for in our survey was, how many of communications programs have ethics requirements, and the only ones that did were journalism programs,” she said.
All students have to take a course in ethics, law and policy; this semester, for instance, Cameron Russell, executive director of Fordham Law’s Center on Law and Information Policy (CLIP) will teach a required course on privacy and surveillance.
“For us to have an ethics, law and policy requirement for the entire program is very unique, and draws on Fordham’s Jesuit tradition of ethics and social justice,” Reich said.
“We’re very proud of that, because I think that’s what sets us apart. This is our niche. I believe we are the go-to program in New York for students who want to become communication and media professionals who make a difference in the world, and who work for the public good.”
]]>The partnership, which was announced on April 24 at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, will pair New York State’s top legal authorities with companies involved in what has become known as the sharing economy.
“This will help new companies navigate our regulatory system, but it will also help us provide insights to state and local governments about outdated or overly cumbersome rules and trends that we need to be aware of in this rapidly growing sector of New York’s economy,” he said.
Schneiderman’s announcement was part of his keynote address at the daylong conference, “Sharing Economy, Sharing City: Urban Law and the New Economy,” organized by the Urban Law Center.
The partnership with Fordham Law is one of three between his office and area colleges, including the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and Brooklyn Law School. Schneiderman, whose office has investigated the sharing economy practices of businesses such as Uber and AirBNB, said he hopes to head off potential problems before they happen. The attorney general’s office is not allowed to advise individual companies, he noted, but programs such as CLIP can.
“We’re very excited to have law students, professors, and lawyers working with these clinics to advise startups … as they move into New York,” he said.
Joel Reidenberg, founding academic director of CLIP, said that the announcement reflects CLIP’s longstanding relationship with the attorney general’s Internet bureau.
“Today’s announcement by Attorney General Schneiderman reflects an evolution of that relationship, and an advancement of CLIP’s work as a research think tank on information technology law and policy issues,” he said.
Getting a handle on the sharing economy is critical because many companies involved in it are poised for exponential growth: Price Waterhouse Coopers estimates that 10 years from now, the sharing economy will control 50 percent of the total revenue of all the rental sectors.
“As the sharing economy rapidly evolves into a mature and important part of America’s economic life, … it is no longer credible for its companies to cling to what I have called a cyber-libertarian vision of a regulation-free environment,” Schneiderman said.
“Just because a company has an app instead of a storefront does not mean laws do not or should not apply.”
With CLIP and other university-based organizations doing consulting, Schneiderman suggested there might be fewer law-breakers to catch.
As an example of getting out in front of crimes, Schneiderman mentioned that his office—once plagued with caseloads of smart phone thefts (3.1 million in 2013 alone)—worked with the iPhone technology to stop them. Rather than spending tax dollars on trying to break up the cartels that were profiting from the thefts, Schneiderman said his office focused on working with Apple in getting kill switches installed in phones, thus removing the theft incentive in the first place.
“Lets try to get the regulations right, lets prioritize our work and engage in an honest and open collaboration,” he said.
“If we do that, the sharing economy holds enormous potential to be a dramatic agent of positive change for our city, or state, and the world as a whole.”
This topic will be the theme of Fordham University’s spring symposium, “Privacy Rights and Wrongs: Balancing Moral Priorities for the 21st Century” on Tuesday, April 21.
The all-day conference features speakers from the worlds of politics, law, theology and philosophy participating in panel discussions on subjects such as:
Amitai Etzioni, University Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at The George Washington University, will deliver the keynote address on “The Key to Limiting Privacy is Oversight.”
The day’s proceedings will be summed up in a session moderated by Celia Fisher, Ph.D., director of the Center for Ethics Education and the Marie Ward Doty Professor of Psychology at Fordham.
“Every year, the center aims to promote a greater public understanding of the world in which we live,” Fisher said. “Through informed perspectives from a variety of disciplines, this conference provides an exciting opportunity to explore the increasingly complex privacy questions surrounding post-9/11 surveillance and the use of the Internet to harvest personal information.”
The conference, which takes place at Fordham’s McNally Amphitheatre, is free and open to the public. RSVP to (718) 817-0926 or [email protected].
The event is co-sponsored by the University’s Center for Ethics Education and its Center on Law and Information Policy.
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