Comm Theory Unraveled

We don't want to tell you what to think, but we do want you to think more about how media impact our public discourse. Join Chris Ottaviano as he unravels McCombs and Shaw's Agenda-Setting Theory.

What would you do if you had a hammer? Would you build a picnic table, or would you turn into a symbol for social change? Charles Millard talks us through Cultural Studies of Stuart Hall with a folk resistance anthem.

What happens when you're quite possibly communication with everyone, everywhere, all at once? Celina Akila helps answer this question with danah boyd and Alice Marwick's theory of Context Collapse and examples from influencers on social media.

Before the Netflix series "Black Mirror," Kyrsten Trowbridge tells us how the film "The Truman Show" already demonstrated Marshall McLuhan's idea that "the medium is the message." 

Sandra Harding and Julia Wood's Feminist Standpoint Theory teaches us that knowledge is socially located, and Caroline Nixon shows us how with a scene from the Academy Award-nominated film, "Hidden Figures."

Black Hawk Down was a popular book and movie depicting a military operation in Somalia. But as Caroline Nixon demonstrates using Stella Ting-Toomey's Face-Negotiation Theory, the film also provides a great example of facework in action.

But we're not done with The Office, yet! In this episode, Donnie Towery uses the hit sitcom to explain corporate colonization. "Corporate colonization" is one the many concepts that come from Stanley Deetz's Critical Theory of Communication in Organizations.

Join Abigail Pfizermaier as she unpacks the not-so-fictional organizational culture of the TV series, "The Office" with theoretical insights from Clifford Geertz and Michael Pacanowsky.

Humans are storytelling creatures, according to Walt Fisher's Narrative Paradigm. And in this episode, Jameson Ollison and Christian Torres show us that Hulk is more than a fictional superhero; Hulk is a story to which people can relate.

Join Zoe Brooks and Cassie O'Connell as they discuss what Aristotle's theory of rhetoric. In this episode, they play a clip from Dead Poets Society to show us what the ancient rhetorical proofs of ethos, pathos, and logos can help us understand about persuasion today.