Learning About Media with Dr. Corrigan
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By |Danielle Workman|
The Communication Studies Department welcomes Dr. Thomas Corrigan as its new assistant professor of Media Studies. Corrigan received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University's College of Communications.
In his short time at CSUSB, Corrigan has made an impact on his students by tailoring course content in ways that are meaningful to their lives. He is known for teaching “fresh” content, selecting interesting texts and effectively facilitating classroom discussions. For example, Corrigan encourages students to share relevant examples in class as a way to make sense of conceptual frameworks.
Corrigan teaches courses, such as Digital Media and Communication, Media History, and Institutions and Advertising as Social Communication. As a research scholar, Corrigan focuses on how digital media disrupt and extend long-established relationships among wealth, power, and the media.
What Corrigan’s scholarship and teaching have in common is an emphasis on media literacy.
“It’s important that students understand how much influence media has in their lives,” Corrigan stresses. “Now that we can all publish instantly and at low cost, is digital media being used to broaden the range of public debate and challenge powerful institutions or is user-generated content simply amplifying mainstream media’s ideas and images?”
In his teaching, Corrigan hopes to foster more critical and ethical thinking about media. “My goal is for students to be able to apply the course concepts to seemingly disparate context,” he notes. “By learning how to think autonomously about media, students will become discerning media producers, consumers, and citizens.”
Doctor Thomas Corrigan