Introduction to New Media explores the complex roles emerging digital media plays in a globally-connected world. Students will situate emerging media in the broader history of human communication and then analyze emerging topics with a variety of analytical frameworks and a functional knowledge of key hardware, software, and network technologies.
Athena Title
Introduction to New Media
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in NMIX 2010E
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will situate the latest developments in emerging media in the broader history of human communication.
Students will apply a broad range of of social, political, and ethical frameworks to analyze emerging media.
Students will describe the key hardware, software, and network technologies that comprise all forms of emerging media.
Students will evaluate new forms of emerging media via multiple methodologies, including topical analyses, iterative applied experiments, and group creative explorations.
Topical Outline
History, present, and future of new media.
Theoretical foundations of human communication.
Evolution of media from early to modern forms.
Social, political, and ethical analytic frameworks for new media.
Encoding, storing, and processing information as digital data.
Essential hardware components of human computer interfaces.
Programming languages and algorithmic thinking.
Sociocultural impacts of computer networks.
Geopolitics of major technology companies.
Transformative impact of the smartphone.
Creative ethics of generative artificial intelligence.
Augmented reality and diminished privacy.
Social media’s power to connect and to divide.
Environmental costs of disruptive technologies.
The new media economy, from start-ups to big tech.
