Research Opportunities
Under the rubric of "applied humanism", the Comparative Media Studies Program promotes a pragmatic style of humanistic and social scientific scholarship. The humanities offer a tradition of thinking about issues of media content, genre, storytelling, and pedagogy, while the qualitative social sciences have an equally rich vocabulary for discussing issues of media context, culture, society, and community.
Hands-on learning is one of the hallmarks of an MIT education. The research initiatives in CMS allow both graduate and undergraduate students to participate in the design, development and testing of new concepts, curricula, frameworks, and platforms for digital media and online networks.
Research Themes
CMS teaching and research activities revolve around six broad themes.
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Current Research Projects
Currently active Comparative Media Studies research projects include:
Research Assistantships (for Graduate Students)
Research Assistantships allow graduate students to engage the current environment of profound media change by working on real-world problems and meeting specific production goals. The publications, symposia, outreach programs, videos, curricular and game designs created by the research projects listed above enhance and enlarge the theoretical and historical aspects of CMS coursework.
UROPS (for Undergraduates)
The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) supports research partnerships between MIT undergraduates and faculty. One of the first programs of its kind in the United States, UROPs allow undergraduates to participate in each phase of standard research activity: developing research plans, writing proposals, conducting research, analyzing data and presenting research results in oral and written form. UROP positions for CMS research projects are updated each term.