This was my absolute FAVORITE comms class (it's double listed) I've ever taken, even though it was taught asynchronously. The professor talks about the origins and structure of the music, movie, and radio industries, how getting popular in each of these industries works, how something becomes culturally important, etc etc. The course heavily relies on your understanding of the weekly readings and lectures. Prof will check your understanding by asking you to write five 1200 word memos throughout the quarter with your impressions of that week's content. I recommend to do these early to save your future self some stress.

There are 3 exams with 2-3 multiple choice and 2-3 free response. The free response focus on the lectures while the MCQ focus on the readings. These exams are easy if you've just watched the lecture once, but be warned that because the exam is shorter, small mistakes like missing one MCQ will cause your overall grade to face a pretty sizable penalty. To my knowledge, no extra credit is offered.

Office hours are extremely helpful. Professor has a lot of interesting stories to tell if you want to know a little more about lecture topics or if you are confused about how to prepare for exams. Overall, in my opinion Professor Rossman is one of the best comm/soc professors at UCLA!

The material is incredibly straightforward, Rossman is very accommodating, and there really isn't that much material. The topics are pretty interesting to think about and the exams are non-cumulative. The assignments are pretty much graded for completion as well.

An amazing class. Here's the grade breakdown:
22.5% 1st midterm
22.5% 2nd midterm
35% final
20% memos

People here are talking about how much reading there is for this class, but this quarter Rossman decided to stop assigning one of the books he typically would assign and instead replace those originally assigned book chapters with super relevant and, in my opinion, really fun articles. Your mileage may vary in terms of the difficulty of the readings, but they were never egregiously long. Each one is close to 15- 20 pages, which is more than fair for a sociology course. We were reading about sex work, the k-pop industry, country artists, and even stand-up comedy careers. All of it was genuinely incredible and were massive eye-openers in how our cultures are produced by our society and not a reflection of it.

This is far more subjective, but I never found the course to be incredibly challenging. It was the right amount of difficulty, and Rossman really explains things with a lot of clarity and with plenty of examples. His exams were very focused on conceptual knowledge; a standard question would be him asking you the parts of this concept he talked about in class, and apply it to different media industries (and he would provide those examples in lecture, but you could very much bring up an example not from lecture long as its correct). As someone who prefers to be tested through conceptual knowledge, this was perfect for me. A lot of people here are complaining about his memos, but they aren't looking for anything crazy; just write about the readings and provide some interesting commentary about them. Long as you have a mix of good analysis and summary, you're getting a perfect score. It doesn't have to be fancy, and even Rossman emphasizes that.

I found that what no one really talks about is how Rossman perfected the Async format. This dude doesn't record an hour and 15-minute lectures; he instead records things into bite-sized lectures that range from 5 minutes to max 20 minutes. I found this to be the perfect format as I never felt overwhelmed with information. And if you were confused, the flipped classroom is there for you to ask any questions you have.

I HIGHLY recommend taking this class if everything I mentioned is appealing to you. A seriously fun class that every Sociology or Communications major should take (assuming he hopefully keeps the same readings lol).

There was so much content to read each week for this class. There is no extra credit and anything late is docked points. The textbooks are old and not relevant. My GPA dropped dramatically because of this class and I regret taking it with this professor. Some of the negative reviews for professors are somehow being removed because I know of other students that were unhappy with the class content and their grades. I had to drop my other class due to this class so be careful! If you can take a different class or with a different professor I highly recommend doing so. Good luck!

This class was one of the most interesting course I have taken for Mass communication. Dr. Rossman is highly knowledgeable and helpful so as long as you do what he assigns, you will get a good grade. This also means try no to slack off as much as possible. I took it asynchronous witch made it tempting to procrastinate but if you watch the lectures on schedule and go to his flip-classroom, you already prepared yourself for the exams. There were 4 memos (4pgs each) for the weekly readings and you can pick which four to write out of ten weekly readings. Definitely do them early, it helps you to determine your proximate grade and gets it out of the way before finals starts approaching. As for the exams, there are relatively short with 50 min for the midterms 1 & 2 (composed of 2 short answers and 3 mcq) and 2 hrs for the final (composed of 4 short-answers and several mcq). The questions and gradings is reasonable. If you watch the lectures, at least skim the readings, and review a couple days prior to the exam, you will do more than fine. Take this class!!! Professor is great. The workload is not little but absolutely manageable. Content is interesting and Dr. Rossman does a great job explaining them in detail with multiple examples.

Good professor. I came into the class without much interest in the topic but Rossman made it engaging. He clearly knows his stuff and does a great job at explaining things intuitively/colloquially. The class was also easy to navigate (simple assignments/exams, etc.).
- Asynchronous lectures (covid-19 remote learning)
- 5 reading memos, 1200 words each, you can choose which weeks to turn them in
- 1 midterm and 1 final, just short answers summarizing a few concepts we learned in lecture
- Partnered term paper, 5000 words, 4 topics

Pretty difficult when it didn’t need to be, too many elaborate concepts that required a lot of explanation to do well on tests. Unless you’re a whiz, I wouldn’t recommend this class.

The tests are HARD- just 4 long essays on lecture material and 5 MC from the readings. The memos are excessively long, you have to write 5 1200 word memos (4-5 pages each) on the readings which are usually vague or confusing. I never went to lecture because it was at 8am but do this at your own risk because I highly doubt you will listen to all of the Bruincasts or retain the info well. Discussion really helps- my TA would just give us a full 50 min summary of everything important in every lecture and it's what got me through the class with a B. I can't really recommend this class to anyone unless you are really intrigued in the topic.

Professor Rossman is quite funny, candid, and extremely intelligent. He gives multiple real life examples and applications of the concepts in various industries to help you understand it more clearly in the creative industries sector. His lectures are bruincasted and the content of his lectures are very significant to the midterm and final. Because they are bruincasted, it is very tempting to not go to lecture, but if you can, definitely go to lecture instead. Otherwise, trust me, you may get lost in the bruincast because of the lack of visual figures he presents in lectures and the length of the lecture may be torturous as you try to capture every detail instead of understanding the big picture that is better illustrated and easier to understand in person and in class. You'll probably save more time if you go to lecture instead of listening to the Bruincast and it's more interesting that way as well. It is still good to review with the Bruincast though. There are 5 memos, a midterm, and a final. The exams consist of free response questions which are entirely lecture-based and about 5 multiple choice questions about the readings. These MC questions are detail-specific so review your memos or read your friends' memos.

Class lectures are interesting and to the point. There's one midterm, one final, and memos that require analysis of the chapters you're assigned to read. Tests have about 4 multiple choice questions based on the readings and 3 essays.
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