Fall Term 2026
Media and Misinformation
COMS 4800C (Weds 08:35-11:25) // Fall
Taught by Chris Russill
How do false and misleading claims spread, stick, and shape our lives? This course examines the production, circulation, and consequences of mis- and disinformation across media systems old and new. We pay particular attention to elections, extreme events, and emergencies – not because these are the only domains where misinformation thrives, but because they reveal with unusual clarity how public trust can be undermined by strategic communication, platform incentives, and the political economy of attention. Students will engage with scholarship on propaganda, epistemic crisis, algorithmic amplification and AI. We ask not just how misinformation works, but why it works, and for whom.
The YouTube Effect
COMS 4800A (Fri 11:35-14:25) // Fall
Taught by Ira Wagman
Television didn’t die, it migrated. This course traces the transformation of screen-based storytelling and programming from broadcast schedules to streaming queues to algorithmic feeds. While YouTube serves as a useful provocation—a platform that reshaped what “watching TV” means—the course is really about the longer arc of how moving images are produced, distributed, monetized, and watched, and what changes when the infrastructure underneath shifts. It explores a range of viewing platforms – from Netflix and Crave to Apple+ and PlutoTV — to consider the cultural and economic value of different kinds of television content. Professor Wagman brings two decades of research on television history, cultural policy, and the entertainment industries to bear on questions about binge culture, creator economies, platform governance, and the persistence of old television logics in the digital age. If you’ve ever wondered why streaming feels both radically new and strangely familiar, this is the course for you..
Winter Term 2027
Media and Radicalization
COMS 4800B (Tue 14:25 -17:35) // Winter
Taught by Sandra Robinson
What role do media play in turning grievance into extremism? This course examines the relationship between communication systems and political radicalization, from historical propaganda to contemporary online pipeline dynamics. Drawing on Professor Robinson’s SSHRC-funded research on populism, far-right narratives, and disinformation in the Canadian social media landscape, we explore how individuals and communities move from mainstream discourse toward radical positions—and how platform architectures, algorithmic cultures, and surveillance infrastructures enable, accelerate, or sometimes interrupt that process. Case studies span right-wing extremism, incel subcultures, and networked misogyny, treated not as simple stories of vulnerable people encountering bad content but as processes embedded in media structures and political communication.
Parallel Publics: Media Fragmentation and Canadian Democracy
COMS 4800D (Weds 11:35-14:25) // Winter
Taught by André Turcotte
What happens to a country’s politics when its citizens no longer share the same screens, feeds, or audio streams? How do people imagine their communities when everyone is viewing, reading, and listening to different things, in different places, at different times? This course examines how fragmented, regionally distinct media systems shape political identity and democratic life across Canada. Moving beyond the idea of a single national media, it explores how Quebec, Western, Atlantic, Northern, and Indigenous media ecosystems produce different political narratives. Grounded in opinion research and media analysis, students learn how audiences are measured, how trust and legitimacy are formed, and how media operates in an increasingly polarized environment. Professor Turcotte brings decades of experience in media analysis. opinion research, and strategic communication to a question that is as much about media as it is about Canada. He approaches this course from a strong theoretical background grounded in practical and real-world cases.