As new technologies accelerate the creation and spread of media, questions about truth, manipulation and public trust are mounting. Faculty from Rice University's Program in Media Studies are available to provide context and commentary on today's rapidly evolving media environment.
Liam Mayes, a lecturer in the humanities who teaches Introduction to Media Studies, said the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has compounded existing concerns about misinformation.
"Between the emergence of generative AI and the sheer amount of media and content produced by all kinds of people and institutions, anxieties about truth and manipulation have been given new life," Mayes said. "Increasingly, we find ourselves asking how reliable is the information we consume, by what means did it end up in front of us and whose agenda is it serving. Our capacity to seek out satisfying answers to these questions is no match for the volume of dubious content on offer as our media landscape is only becoming more saturated and more complex. Cultivating critical media literacy is more urgent than ever."
Michael Dango, associate professor of English and director of the program, said students' fluency with platforms like TikTok and Instagram doesn't always translate into a critical awareness of how their social media feeds are shaped.
"Today's students are already skilled makers of media, whether shooting TikToks on professional-quality smartphone cameras or curating a digital portfolio on Instagram, but because they've been raised in such a media-saturated environment, it's harder for them to step outside themselves and see how their consumption and production of media is shaped by, for instance, algorithms serving corporate interests or polarized and misleading news sources," Dango said. "That's why it's more important than ever to connect our individual experiences of media to bigger social and economic structures worthy of critique. The Program in Media Studies at Rice aims to do just that: combining the creative production of media in all its forms - from documentary film to podcasting - with the critical study of media, power and politics."
Rice's Program in Media Studies was launched within the School of Humanities and Arts to train students in both the creative production and critical study of media. With courses in podcasting, film and social media alongside theory and history, the program equips students with tools to question sources, understand the systems behind them and create purposeful media of their own.
