Areas of Concentration within PhD Program

News and Information

Emphasizes performance, critical analysis, effects, representations and the community-building potential of news and information media.

Faculty expertise: organizational management, media ethics and normative theory, media law, race and gender, media credibility, and international/intercultural/ethnic media.

Media Arts

Emphasizes performance, critical analysis, effects, representations and the community-building potential of entertainment and experimental media including visual digital, video, and design; audio; multimedia, and long-form print media.

Faculty expertise: creative writing; script writing; documentary film; multimedia, video, and digital production.

Strategic Communication

Emphasizes a broad spectrum of theoretical and practice-oriented research topics and problems in public relations and advertising.

Faculty expertise: rhetorical analysis, race and gender, international public relations, law, new media advertising, organizational behavior, and message strategy and tactics.

Areas of Emphasis within Concentrations

Doctoral students will be encouraged to design a flexible, interdisciplinary program targeting an area of emphasis within these concentrations. Some examples are history, media management, media ethics, visual communication, international communication, and communication theory and methodology.  Students will be guided in making these choices through consultation with their committees. These choices will allow students to tailor courses to their interests and plan dissertation topics accordingly.