What does communications mean, really?
The big questions in a student’s high school years revolve around the future, especially college and a specific major. While some students have been dead set on the track to become a doctor since their early years, most are confused and intimidated by the enormous amount of options available. When a student chooses communications as his or her focus, many nod and agree that it would be a good route, but what does communications really mean? Speaking in front of a camera or writing a news article? Handling graphics for a news show or creating an advertising campaign for a big name company? A recent open house of the communications college at Penn State cleared up all confusion.
The journalism major at Penn State includes three focus areas: print, broadcast, and photo. Fairly obvious, print is focused on writing for newspapers, broadcast on reporting on-screen, and photo on capturing images of newsworthy scenes and events. Ask someone what communications is, and this will most likely be the answer, but there is so much more to it.
Another aspect of communications is advertising/public relations. Relatively straightforward, advertising can be compared to marketing communications. These students study all aspects that go into making a successful ad, like demographics, age group, and design.
The next category is film-video, which could include movie making, television creation, and documentary studies. A highly collaborative form of communications, a film-video major must cultivate critical thinking and good time management skills.
Another part of the communications field offered is telecommunications. Although possessing a misleading name (I believed it was television communicating), this major incorporates all the background aspects of broadcast journalism and takes a business angle on the subject. Graduates with a telecom degree could leave college and become a manager at NBC or a producer of a popular program.
The final major offered at Penn State is called media studies. Taking a more analytical view of communications, media studies students focus on trends in general communications and how it affects the masses. It can also be connected to other educational tracks like pre-law.
The lines between these majors may still seem a little murky, but that is an integral part of communications. A comm student cannot be streamlined into one specific topic to succeed or else they will be unable to do their purpose: communicate events and opinions to the population. The fluidity of communications and its ability to teach many disciplines at once draws in prospective scholars, but knowing how communications is broken down aides a high school student in deciding the route they wish to take.