Course Descriptions for Other Media Law Related Courses at UNC

Graduate Courses

  • AMST 850 – Digital Humanities Practicum

This practicum blends graduate seminar discussions with hands-on training in the digital humanities. Students will work in the Digital Innovation Lab, contributing to real-life projects while developing their own professional development goals. Students will emerge with a deeper understanding of and experience with digital humanities approaches, practices, and issues.

  • BUSI 404 – The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business

An introduction to the legal system and an examination of ethical issues that affect business.

  • BUSI 701 – Artistic Entrepreneurship 

This course is a study in entrepreneurship and the specific challenges faced by artistic entrepreneurs.

  • COMM 856 – Seminar in Communication Technology

Prerequisite, COMM 700. Examines new communication technologies, their spatial and social diffusion, and how these relate to theories of culture, politics, and technology and the real-world contexts in which technologies are received. May be repeated.

  • INLS 566 – Information Assurance

Prerequisite, INLS 161 or 461. Aspects of data integrity, privacy, and security from several perspectives: legal issues, technical tools and methods, social and ethical concerns, and standards.

  • INLS 584 – Information Ethics

An overview of ethical reasoning, followed by discussion of issues most salient to information professionals, e.g., intellectual property, privacy, access/censorship, effects of computerization, and ethical codes of conduct.

  • INLS 890 – Digital Humanities/Digital History

In this interdisciplinary graduate seminar, we will explore the implications of the application of digital technologies to the materials, questions, practices, and potential of humanities scholarship. Although we will range across issues and problematics from the humanities broadly defined, we will pay particular attention to the impact of digital technologies on historical inquiry.

  • LAW 364 – N.C. State Constitutional Law

This course will combine an historical overview of the North Carolina Constitution from 1776 to the present with the study of early and contemporary cases interpreting the state constitution.

  • LAW 477 – Patent Prosecution Seminar

The seminar focuses on practical application of patent law concepts in preparing and prosecuting patent applications. The course examines patent statutes and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rules governing patent prosecution as well as court decisions impacting and interpreting patents. In addition to in-class discussions, students will practice writing claims, draft a patent application, a response to an office action, perform a patentability search, and prepare letters to clients relating to patent practice questions.

Undergraduate Courses 

  • COMM 171 – Argumentation and Debate

Analysis of issues, use of evidence, reasoning, brief making, and refutation. Argumentative speeches and debates on legal cases and on current issues. Designed for prospective law students, public policy students, speech teachers, and college debaters.

  • COMP 305 – Advanced Expository Writing for Law

Advanced practice with legal oral and written discourse. Special attention to disciplinary rhetoric, style, genre, format, and citation.

  • COMP 380 – Computers and Society

An introduction to digital technology and computer science issues in society. Topics may include Internet history, privacy, security, usability, graphics, games, computers in the media, development, economics, social media, AI, IP, computer and Internet ethics, global ethics, current legal issues, etc.

  • COMP 382 – Introduction to Cyberculture

Prerequisite, COMP 380. Permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite. Explores cultural and ethical issues arising from individuals’ and societies’ use of information and computing technologies. Includes computer ethics; Internet history; IP, DRM, social media; gaming, virtual worlds; privacy; security; anonymity; net neutrality; AI, the technological singularity. Lecture and discussion.

  • COMP 388 – Advanced Cyberculture Studies

Prerequisite, COMP 380 or 382. Permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite. Explores Internet history and cyberphilosophy; online identify construction, community, communication, creativity; bodies/cyborgs; intelligence and AI. Students perform independent research into and analyze virtual worlds, social media, anonymous bulletin boards, mobile media, and more, and create digital art and literature. Seminar-style; students collaborate on designing and leading class.

  • ENGL 385 – Literature and Law

Explores various connections of literature and law, including literary depictions of crime, lawyers, and trials; literary conventions of legal documents; and/or shared problems in interpretation of law and literature.

  • JOMC 244 – Talk Politics: An Introduction to Political Communication

Prerequisite, JOMC 153. An overview of political communication issues and an examination of political campaigns for students who intend to practice communication in the public arena and for those interested in political processes.

  • JOMC 340 – Introduction to Media Law: Journalism Focus

Prerequisite, JOMC 153. Focuses on speech and press freedoms under the First Amendment. Topics include prior restraint, libel, privacy, protection of anonymous sources, free press-fair trial, federal regulation of electronic and new media, freedom of information, intellectual property, and international issues.

  • JOMC 341 – Introduction to Media Law: Advertising, Public Relations, and Strategic Communication Focus

Prerequisite, JOMC 153. Focuses on speech and related freedoms under the First Amendment. Topics include commercial speech, corporate speech, libel, privacy, regulated commercial communications, federal regulation of electronic and new media, freedom of information, intellectual property, and international issues.

  • JOMC 344 – Censorship

Its history, conflicting philosophies and practice through politics, government, ethnicity, religion, pressure groups, the media, and the law, with emphasis on events and personalities.

  • JOMC 349 – Introduction of Internet Issues and Concepts

Students develop an understanding of social, legal, political, and other issues related to the use of the Internet. Offered online.

  • JOMC 377 –  Sports Communication

Permission of the instructor. Examination of organizations involved in the sports communication field, including publishing, team and league media relations, college sports information offices, broadcasting, and advertising.

  • JOMC 434 – Public Relations Campaigns 

Prerequisites, JOMC 232, 279, and 431. In this capstone experience, students apply concepts and skills from earlier classes to develop a campaign plan for a client organization. Activities include conducting background and audience research; developing realistic objectives, strategies, tactics, and evaluation plans; producing a portfolio of supporting materials; and pitching the campaign to the client.

  • JOMC 440 – Digital Media Law and Society

Prerequisite, JOMC 340. Explains legal issues raised by Internet communication and guides students in thinking critically about how those issues can be resolved. Reviews how courts, other branches of government, the private sector, and legal scholars have responded to the Internet. Topics may include digital copyright, net neutrality, privacy, and Internet censorship abroad.

  • JOMC 458 – Southern Politics: Critical Thinking and Writing 

Interpretive-contextual journalism focused on the trends, issues, and politics that influence democracy in North Carolina, the American South, and the nation. Through readings and the practice of analytical journalism, the course explores government policy making, election campaigns, social and economic trends, ethics, and citizen-leader relationships.

  • POLI 75 – First-Year Seminar: Thinking about Law

This seminar explores the notion of a rule of law, statutory and case law, legal analysis, and the realities of the adverbial system and legal practice. Students will be engaged in analytical thinking and expression through classroom discussion, analytical papers, and examinations.

  • POLI 411 – Civil Liberties under the Constitution 

An analysis of the complex political problems created by the expansion of protection for individual liberties in the United States. Emphasis will be on contemporary problems with some supplemental historical background.

  • POLI 418 – Mass Media and American Politics 

Junior-senior standing required. Examination of the role, behavior, and influence of the mass media in American politics.

  • RELI 338 – Religion in American Law

An exploration of the position of religion in American legal and social theory, with particular focus on jurisprudence under the First Amendment.

List and descriptions are current as of October 8, 2015 (but subject to change).