Introduction in Media Studies

Journalism study program, Bachelor level, 1st year – taught in English

The purpose of this course is to introduce first year journalism student to fundamental theories and concepts in the field of media studies. The course is focused on the understanding of the following topics:

• the evolution of mass media and the interplay between society, economy and media;
• mass communication and early effects theories and propaganda theories;
• the structure, organization and typology of media institutions;
• reception theory and types of audience segmentation;
• contemporary developments in the media sector.

Media and Popular Culture

Journalism & Digital Media study programs, Bachelor level, 1st year (optional) – taught in English & Romanian

The purpose of this course is developing critical thinking about popular media texts: violent news, tabloid newspapers, cartoons and comic strips, tabloid television, reality-shows, sports talk-shows, music videos, advertisements, online videos. Also, this course deals with defining, understanding and using specific concepts in the field of media and cultural studies: popular culture, high culture, low culture, mass culture, public sphere, attention economy, media spectacle, presentation, representation and self-presentation.

Editing in Web Languages: HTML and CSS

Digital Media study program, Bachelor level, 1st year (mandatory) – taught in Romanian

This course takes a practical approach to learning HTML, CSS and becoming familiarized with other languages commonly used in Web Design: XML, Markdown etc. Course topics include: HTML basics, Semantic HTML, CSS basics, CSS Frameworks, static HTML & CSS templates, dynamic templates for Web Content Management Systems - Wordpress themes.

Web Content Management Systems

Digital Media study program, Bachelor level, 1st year (mandatory) – taught in Romanian

This course introduces students to Web Content Management Systems and working with dynamic websites for small or large-scale projects. Course topics include: content definition, content modeling, web servers and web hosting, technological stack and system requirements, types of content management, system design and configuration, permisions and user management, structure and navigation, adding functionality through plugins and extensions, customizing design by editing display templates, publication, moderation, maintainance. Over the duration of the course students are engaged in practical activities using various WCMS - Wordpres, Drupal, Joomla, Concrete5, Grav, Magento, MediaWiki, MOODLE.

New Media Theory

Journalism & Digital Media study programs, Bachelor level, 2nd year – taught in English and Romanian

The purpose of the course is understanding the development of new media and associated phenomena from the technological, politico-economic and social perspectives. The course is focused on the understanding of the following topics:

• the social, political and economic changes related to the use of new media technologies: the bias of technology, media ecology, technological determinism;
• professional and interpersonal communication in the context of new media: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, networked publics, publicly private, privately public, mass-media, networked media;
• the paradigm shifts associated with new communication technologies;
• the main academic theories relating to new media technology use;
• democracy, remix, remediation, self-presentation and creativity in the context of contemporary new media.

Digital Data Analysis

Digital Media study program, Bachelor level, 2nd year – taught in Romanian

Digital Media Bachelor program, 2nd year - taught in Romanian since 2016

This course is focused on open data collection and social media data analysis methods in the context of internet research, data journalism, online market research, online communication research and media analysis. The course is structured on the following topics:

• Web Data Extraction, Web Wrapping, Web Scraping, Web Crawling;
• Data cleanup and Data management;
• Automated data collection through API interrogation;
• Social Network Analysis;
• Data analysis and visualisation.

Media Analysis

Journalism & Digital Media study programs, Bachelor level, 3rd year – taught in English and Romanian

The course is meant to enable journalism students will to use media analysis techniques to deconstruct media texts, to discuss meaning in relation to cultural context and the audience’s expectations, to identify and explain ideological elements and bias in media representation. The course is structured on the following techniques:

• analysing media institutions using the ownership, control, production and distribution model;
• analysing media texts, professional processes and practices using ideological/Marxist analysis
• using semiotic methods and narrative analysis to deconstruct media texts;
• using sociological analysis to discuss values, lifestyles, stereotypes, genres and formulas in media representation and correlate them with the audience’s expectations.

Film Studies

Journalism study program, Bachelor level, 3rd year (optional) – taught in English

The Film Studies course aims to provide students with sets of concepts used in both film preproduction and film analysis and the skills necessary to plan and implement short film projects. The course is structured on the following topics:

• Understanding the basic mechanisms, practices and processes of the film industry;
• Recognizing fiction and non-fiction film genres;
• Analyzing the structure of films;
• Writing a pitch for a short documentary film.

New Media Culture

Media Communication study program, Master’s level, 1st year – taught in English

This research-oriented course is focused on the understanding of the theoretical frameworks, methodology and collection/analysis tools that can be used to research new media communication from the technological, political economy and social perspectives. Students learn to use online data collection software such as NodeXL(using social media APIs), Helium Scraper (HTML web scraping) and other services, and also automated analysis software such as Tropes (and other natural language/semantic analysis tools).

Web Design

Media Communication and Media Production study programs, Master’s level, 1st year (optional) – taught in English

This practical course is meant to help students develop their understanding of the Web design principles in the context of the wide-spread use of Content Management Systems. This practical project-based course is structured on the following topics:

• understanding the Hypertext Markup Language HTML;
• understanding Cascading Style Sheets (CSS);
• understanding Web Content Management Systems (CMS);
• using CMS to implement functionalities based on user needs and use-case scenarios;
• customizing CMS templates using HTML and CSS.