The Center on Media and Society, the newest addition to the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, is designed to bring the world of media and communication practice to the University of Massachusetts Boston campus, complementing and enhancing academic courses and research. To add to the University’s urban mission, the Center on Media and Society has identified unique contributions it hopes to make to the community at large. The Center has begun its work in 2004 by focusing on two themes: News Media and Political Power, and Ethnic and Community Journalism. Ellen Hume, former White House correspondent and national television commentator, leads the Center as its founding director, and Prof. Mark Schlesinger is its academic advisor.

Media are a central factor of life around the world. The average American household has the television turned on 7 hours a day. The world’s Internet population of 508 million users is expanding rapidly. Radio is identified by the World Bank as a critical asset to economic and political development in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Film, television, music, radio, advertising, print publishing and computer software were in 1999 America’s top export, worth almost $80 billion. Sociologist Todd Gitlin observes that “spending time with communications machinery is the main use to which we have put our freedom.” What difference is this making? How should consumers and content creators understand the role of media content and availability in politics, economics, and social cultures? How does our brain process information differently when we are reading a newspaper, listening to radio, surfing the Net, or watching TV? What is journalism exactly, and under what circumstances does it matter to public policy-making? How should we determine the trustworthiness and value of media content? What is the role of the Internet in China’s democracy movement? What are the most effective and/or ethical communications techniques for advocacy, negotiation or persuasion? How does it matter if information is portrayed through different journalism and advocacy frameworks on television? These are some of the questions for scholars to address and students to understand as part of an academic field discipline called media and communication studies. This field that has developed exponentially in the last 25 years, following the media’s own growth in scope and influence.

Why have a Center on Media and Society at UMB?

UMB serves a diverse and motivated constituency, many of whom are first-generation college students looking for an affordable university education. UMB teaches over 12,000 students (9,000 undergraduate, 2,500 graduate, and 1,650 continuing education students) throughout the year at its commuter campus at Columbia Point, on the Boston harbor next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Many UMB students come from Boston’s ethnic and immigrant communities. Fifty-three percent get financial aid. Most are working and many also are caring for families as they go to college. Our tuition costs and fees are a fraction of what students pay to study journalism and communications at nearby Northeastern, Emerson and Boston University. Many UMB students have transferred from community colleges or other four-year colleges in Massachusetts. Slightly over half the students who apply to be freshmen at UMB are admitted. Just over half of the full time undergraduate students attending UMB are in the “traditional” age range of 18 to 22; about a fifth of all UMB students are 31 or over.

The Center is part of an effort at UMass Boston to enhance its curriculum by including a new focus on media and communication studies. The Center makes job skills and connections to the world of work a central part of our mission. We are developing internships for UMB college credit at New England Cable News (NECN), newspapers in the Boston area; American Public Television (APT) and WUMB, our campus public radio station. We are working to create other internships at local media, government and public relations companies. We also hope to establish “coaching” relationships with local professionals for selected students who are heading into media and communications careers.