Why You Should Study Communications and Media

There are so many options when it comes to studying in Prague. With all of the universities and majors, it can be hard to figure out where to start. Here are our reasons for why you should study Communications and Mass Media at University of New York in Prague.

A Comprehensive Approach

If communication as a topic seems broad, that’s because it is. Communication studies can look at how entire countries communicate, or focus just on the communication between two people. While other universities might take a more production-based approach to Communications, such as teaching journalism or applications like Photoshop, University of New York in Prague teaches a more comprehensive view of Communications for the first two years of a student’s undergraduate studies, to give students the full picture of all communication and media fields. Then the last two years of the program are spent studying something more specific.

“We’re opening all the doors to all the different fields of study within Communications, whether it’s cultural, social, interpersonal, business, visual, cultural, political, or organizational,” says Dr. Todd Nesbitt, Chair of the Department of Communications and Mass Media. This way, he says, students can see how broad the field is and gain the background they need before choosing to specialize. The last thing you want to do is study journalism for three years only to realize you actually aren’t interested in journalism.

The benefit of a more comprehensive approach is that students have the time to develop a broader and deeper view of the field by learning from “professors who have dedicated their lives to studying a subject, not just promoting a skill,” Nesbitt says.

What Does Every Job Need?

Think of any workplace. What is one of the biggest problems in the daily happenings of business? Communication. Whether it’s sales, marketing or management, so much of business relies on how to effectively communicate.

And while business schools might have a lot of students, sometimes the most innovative business people come from different fields. For example, Mark Zuckerberg actually majored in Psychology at Harvard, not Computer Science or Business. “Companies are desperate for people who can think differently,” Nesbitt says.

Furthermore, thanks to social media and other digital platforms, every industry is becoming “mediatized,” as Nesbitt calls it. Athletes and celebrities as well as entrepreneurs are all looking for ways to build better brands and better communicate with their audiences.

Cultural Fault Lines

If you’re an English speaker, it might seem ironic to study Communications in a country where you don’t speak the native language. However, as Nesbitt will tell you, there is no better place to study Communications than in the Czech Republic. “Prague is an epicenter for Communications that most people don’t really know about,” he says.

Just like in the Cold War, Prague is again on the fault line between the East and West. It’s a major center of attention in the world and a major base of Western and Eastern propaganda think tanks. So if you’re interested in learning about how governments and the media influence people, Prague is the city to be.

Demand for People

Many might think the best place to study Communications would be a city like New York, but Prague has something that New York doesn’t: There’s desperation for people in the Czech Republic that have an international outlook.

“Whenever you open marketing and media magazines, all they talk about is where are we going to find people,” Nesbitt says. Since the city acts as a Communications epicenter, many companies want to have a foothold in Prague. While competition is high in places like New York, Nesbitt says that “here it’s more than possible to get a foot in the door.”