by JUMANAH ABUALKHAIR
78 Magazine talks to Francesco Arese Visconti (FAV) about the direction of the department.
78: What sets the media department apart from others on campus? What are its key strengths?
FAV: The department is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. The main difference is that media is so flexible, and it could be implemented in any curriculum. These days, social media and new devices are very accessible to everybody and can be applied to anything. If you want to find a job in the next years, you need to be able to think critically, analyze context, be flexible, and be reliable. These are things you don’t learn from YouTube tutorials or books. You learn this through human connection. And this is one of our strengths in our department, which is very particular to Webster Geneva.
78: What are some activities you’d like for prospective and current students to know?
FAV: We’re offering summer workshops related to video and photography for younger prospective students (12 to 16 years old) from July 3rd to the 7th and from July 10th to the 14th. Students will get to experience life on campus, and become a part of the university environment. Whenever possible, we try to implement projects connected to organizations and companies. This fall, we’ll have a class that will develop a project with IdeaSquare in CERN, running for 16 weeks at their site. The aim of this collaboration is to create an algorithm for hate speech on social media. These are just two examples of what we’re doing.