Master of Arts in Communication
The general goal of the聽Master鈥檚 Program is to聽develop communicators who are theoretically聽informed and聽technically competent in聽research on communication, media聽technologies, and聽society.
The specific objectives of the program are the following:
- Provide the student with varied theoretical聽frameworks and historical foundations that assess the聽interrelationships聽between communicative processes, media technologies, and societal dynamics,聽with聽emphasis on the conditions and experiences prevalent in developing country聽contexts.
- Equip the student with conceptually-driven聽production skills that are geared towards creative and聽integrative use of聽communicative technologies and that are attuned to diverse societal conditions.
- Enable the students to conceptualize,聽implement, and disseminate research that contribute to聽scholarship on聽communication, media technologies, and society, especially about the聽Philippines and the聽global South more broadly.
Curriculum Overview
Students are required 18 units of core courses, 12 units of electives, and six units that will be credited towards thesis paper writing.
Entry Requirements
Students applying to the program will have to take the 开元真人 Graduate Admission Test (DGAT). They also have the option to submit one piece of writing that demonstrates their ability in academic writing. This will be especially helpful if they intend to apply for scholarship opportunities.
Publication Requirement
As part of the program requirements for graduation, each student should have at least one publication in a refereed journal or one juried creative work.
Core Courses (18 units)
Each core course is credited for 3 units:
Communication and New Media Theory (COM537M)
This core course introduces key communication and new media theories and the research conducted in relation to these theories. The course will open with a discussion of what constitutes 鈥渢heory,鈥� “communication,” “media” and “new media” as well as an interrogation of the various philosophical approaches to communication and new media studies. It will then survey some of the key theories and models used in the field, looking at their historical development and future trajectory.
Media Criticism: Approaches and Practices (COM531M)
This core course reviews the various schools of media criticism, ranging from media effects to genre, audience reception, semiotics, post-structuralism, and intersectionality.
Histories of Media Forms and Institutions (COM532M)
This core course provides a comprehensive historical survey of the development of print, broadcasting, film, and interactive multimedia formats and their systems of distribution. It also evaluates recent trends in the convergence of various communication technologies and emergence of new audiences and markets.
Discourses Cultural Production (COM535M)
This core course examines the interplay of political, industrial, commercial, cultural and artistic forces in the process of media production. It also situates this interplay within the transformative dynamics of globalisation and technological innovation.
Ethics, Standards and Public Policy (COM536M)
This core course discusses political issues raised by the interaction between innovative communication technologies and practices on one hand and relevant societal ethics, standards, and public policy on the other hand.
Media Research and Proposal Writing (COM528M)
This core course hones one鈥檚 skills in developing appropriate conceptual approaches and using appropriate methodological techniques in order to write a scholarly thesis proposal in communication.
Elective Courses (12 units)
Each elective is credited for 3 units
Health Communication (COM710M)
This elective course provides an introduction to foundational concepts, theories, and methods necessary for analyzing key issues in the field of Health Communication. At the end of the course, students, in partnership with the course facilitator and community members, are expected to propose a health communication project.
Hypernarratives (COM617M)
This elective course covers explores modes of fiction construction by creating interactive stories.
Immersive Media Environments (COM715M)
This elective course on digital media design focuses on the production of immersive media environments through the diffusion of interactive media into various aspects of our lives. It covers design, usability, technique, and entertainment by exploring various environments such as learning, gaming, shopping and social networking. It also analyses adoption of new technologies and contexts of use through case studies of immersive media solutions.
Interactive Applications and Computational Thinking (COM728M)
This elective course sharpens one’s ability to think computationally in order to begin successfully working with various technologies, including websites, mobile applications and games. This course also serves as a primer for application to development, becoming a starting point for platform-specific development.
Managing New Media for Organizations (COM702M)
This elective course exposes students to the dynamics, economics, and technologies that are reshaping organizations and industries worldwide in an age of convergent media.
More electives
Media and Social Intimacies (COM723M)
This elective course explores how diverse media content from around the world shape people’s imaginaries of diverse forms of intimacy, from the romantic to the familial to the communal. It also looks into how different information and communication technologies shape their practices of these intimacies.
Media Industry Studies (COM720M)
The course provides a platform for the discussion of critical and conceptual perspectives and methodological approaches for the study of media industries. It will cover discussions covering a breadth of media industries and their ecology, including their global and historical contexts.
Mobile Spaces for Learning (COM701M)
This elective course exposes students to the role of mobile technologies in fostering spaces for contemporary participatory learning culture, where learners can build, explore, share and collaborate with others.
Multimedia Production (COM724M)
The elective course builds on the basic photography and videography skills of students for the production of audio-visual communication materials. It teaches a range of skills and knowledge on the production of dynamic and creative multimedia presentations incorporating photographs, video, audio, sound effects, texts and maps. It includes a capstone multimedia production for a particular company or organization.
National Cinemas (COM709M)
The course surveys and examines various theories, approaches and histories in the study of national, transnational and post-national cinemas. It will cover both textual and political economic approaches towards selected cinematic oeuvre from around the world.
New Media and Social Change (COM727M)
This course will expose students to the opportunities and challenges as well as implications of engaging new communication technologies鈥攕uch as the internet, social media, and mobile media 鈥� for communitarian and emancipatory purposes.聽 It provides the opportunity to apply the lessons on the promises and perils of new media to critique existing online initiatives and to develop projects that advance one’s personal advocacies using new media.
New Media Entrepreneurship (COM703M)
This elective course discusses the basics of entrepreneurship and evolving business models for emerging media technologies. It uses contemporary case studies that blend instruction in concepts about entrepreneurship with concepts about the transformations in media economics resulting from the emergence and developments of digital technologies.
New Media Governance and Politics (COM616M):
This elective course examines the interactions between emerging media technologies and political institutions, actors and processes, in light of theories of communication, media, and political practice.
New Media Literacies (no course code)
This elective course investigates media literacy as aspects of traditional media blend with new forms of media. It studies narrative in terms of how it is now understood, created coherently and made relevant and meaningful with the current use and production of hypermedia.
Online News Publishing (COM612M)
This elective course covers the production of different journalism formats in online publishing. It will look at the evolving digital tools 鈥攊ncluding social media鈥攖o best practices and business models in digital media to foster a comprehensive understanding of the constantly changing publishing industry.
Popular Culture (COM618M)
This elective course studies the role of digital media in the globalization of popular culture across media genres.
Public Communication Campaigns (COM714M)
This elective course harnesses one’s capacity to formulate, develop, and implement public communication campaigns in the context of a multi-media environment. It aims to improve one’s skills and knowledge to critically assess and evaluate campaign collaterals and messaging to enable them to plan and execute more strategic campaigns that using appropriate media platforms that will advocate for positive change in the areas of social action, environment, public health, popular culture, and politics, among others.
Queer Cinema (COM721M)
This elective course critically examines representations of queerness and sexuality in cinema. It looks at cinemas from around the world and critically engages with various cultures of sexuality and how they intersect in a globalised cultural environment.
Reconstituting the Image (COM614M)
This elective course deals with the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of image manipulation and subject representation.
Screenwriting in the Philippine Film Industry (COM795M):
This elective course studies screenwriting practices in the context of the Philippine film industry. For those interested, discussions in this course may also result in a screenplay project.
Special Topics and Issues in Applied Media Studies (COM719M)
This elective course interrogates emerging topics and/ or issues in media practice in the Philippines and globally. It encourages an engagement with an identified thematic focus and/ or issue through theory and research-informed production. The thematic focus and/ or issue, together with the readings, is directed by the expertise of the assigned course instructor.
Transmedia (COM731M)
This course explores the theory and practice of transmedia as a framework for narrative distribution and content creation across media platforms. It hones the students鈥� creative and technological ability to plan and manage communication and media projects in an expanded digital environment. The course will also take you through the evolution of transmedia and its application on various modes of media practice from communication campaign to film and documentary.
The Documentary Discourse (COM737M)
This elective course covers the nature, history, and forms of the documentary film. It also examines the process of producing and creating the documentary film, including the impact of digital media.
The Revisioning Impulse in the Independent Film (COM732M)
This elective course appraises the conceptual and technical strategies employed by independent filmmakers to communicate alternative perspective on contemporary social problems.
Thinking Photographically (COM722M)
This elective course discusses historical and intellectual developments surrounding photography as a medium. It also allows for a creative engagement with these developments through a conceptually-driven 鈥渕ini-exhibition鈥� portfolio project.
Understanding Philippine Cinema (COM729M)
This elective course examines the different social dynamics that have been central to Philippine cinema. It looks into the diverse production practices, technological innovations, and cultural influences that have shaped this cinema鈥檚 key filmmakers and their films.
Thesis (6 units)
Each course is credited for 3 units.
Thesis (COM851M onwards)
This course requires the presentation and defense of a scholarly Master’s level research project in Communication.