Class Recap

Online Communication and Citizen Participation

As a cognitive science student from California, taking classes at a foreign university in unfamiliar departments posed a lot of uncertainty for me. I am currently spending a semester away from UC Berkeley to study abroad in Madrid, Spain and attend Carlos III in Getafe. Ultimately, I decided to take three classes: Media Psychology, Spanish Art History, and Online Communication and Citizen Participation because I was drawn to the course material and felt these classes would complement my study of the human mind. 

My old home: University of California, Berkeley

My new home: Carlos III 

I was particularly fond of my time in the last of these classes, a course offered primarily to first year bilingual journalism students. Initially I was very drawn to this course because of my fascination with communication technology and more than anything, how it influences the “human experience”. Specifically, I am very interested in exploring how technology and the web have influenced the way people gain access to information and interact with one another.

This class approached both of these topics with the angle of how technology can be used to advance human rights and better the world, politically and socially. I appreciated that we weren’t just studying the material to understand how the web is currently used, but also with extra attention to how it can and should be used. There was just the right amount of political and cultural content to make the class highly meaningful without overwhelming students with polemic and complicated information. All in all, the course was extremely engaging and provided an introduction to many areas of a general topic, including examples that were powerful and informative.

My favorite topic in the class was about the way storytelling can be used as an effective means of reaching people, and the power a good story has. I felt it was good that an emphasis was also placed on the importance of multimedia executions of these stories, and on the integration of data visualization for supporting a story. Though I have limited knowledge regarding the field journalism, I do think the industry is headed that direction and that is was valuable for us to learn about them and practice including them in our work. 

This video describes the importance of storytelling today, and I felt like it was an interesting compliment to what we learned in class. 

And interestingly, I am currently interning at Saffron Brand Consultants, a brand strategy consultancy. We just published this article about the importance of storytelling for building strong brands. Clearly word is catching on!

I was extremely impressed with our professor Leila Nachawati Rego. Not only was her level of both English and Spanish impeccable—clearly an asset within her field. I felt the way she approached the material, interacted with her students, and organized the class material to be very effective and interesting. For example, we discussed government surveillance quite a lot and what is occurring in many countries today. In studying this topic, the class could have easily become distracted in discussing the politics of each country, and perhaps criticizing the way governments have dealt with surveillance. However, I felt Professor Nachawati Rego directed the class’ attention to the means by which journalists and activists are advocating their beliefs. Professor Nachawati Rego was highly objective in her political and social commentary and kept the class focused on the topics central to journalism, demonstrating a command over the students and material that I seldom encounter with professors.

As a non-Spanish student, I appreciated the emphasis put on meeting students from alternative backgrounds and sharing details and examples that came from our home countries. It was a pleasure getting to meet students from Australia, Venezuela, Sweden, Germany, South Korea and different cities across Spain. I was impressed with the level of camaraderie among the Spanish students, and realized it must be due, in part, to the Spanish system where students of the same major take the majority of their classes together. This is highly different from the experience I have had at UC Berkeley, where I have a massive amount of freedom regarding which classes I take and when.

Though this class does not have a direct relationship to my major because it doesn’t analyze the way the human mind works, it was interesting for me to consider how media reflect the human psyche and our interests as people. Not to mention the fact that I have worked a bit in digital advertising and marketing strategy, all of which investigate how people engage with digital media.

I am very glad I chose to take this class. My peers all seemed to enjoy it a lot, there was a good classroom dynamic, the topics were very modern and interdisciplinary.

Free expression is being recognized as someone who matters and someone whose voice deserves to be heard.