Department of Communication Arts

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Students working with a camera in CA355.
Students interacting with a discussion session of CA250.
Students listening to each other's podcasts in CA330.

Communication Arts at UW–Madison

Welcome to the home of communication studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. We teach the production and consumption of communication in its diverse forms.

Join Communication Arts

Undergraduate Program

Be a part of one of the most popular majors in the College of Letters and Science at one of the top public universities in the country. Focus your studies on either Communication Science and Rhetoric, or Radio, Television, and Film.

Graduate Program

Join our renowned graduate program to do groundbreaking research in Communication Science, Film, Media and Cultural Studies, or Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture.

Latest News

  • Strengthening Our Alumni Relations

    With over 14,000 living alumni who earned degrees in Communication Arts since our program was founded over 100 years ago, it has become a massive responsibility to maintain connections with our graduates. Our 2025-2029 Strategic Plan committed to strengthening the shared affinities among that ever-growing community. As part of that initiative, Jamie Prey joined our program as our Alumni Relations Officer this spring. In this role, Prey works to reconnect with these 14,000 alumni and learn about their excitement to support Communication Arts.

    December 1, 2025

  • Social Media as Literature

    For a long time, people assumed that reading great literature, like the works of Shakespeare, made people better, strengthened their character, and gave them culture. These days, however, few people find themselves engrossed in the monologues of Hamlet and are instead entrenched in a sub-thread on Reddit or the comments section of a viral TikTok video. Can social media make us better people in the same way it was once thought that reading Shakespeare could? Students in a new Communication Arts and Digital Studies course are working to find out.

    December 1, 2025

  • Tool or Teammate?

    Imagine it was your job to plan an event to let students get their first taste of UW–Madison. You might propose a cheese carving contest. Or maybe they get to make homemade ice cream and have their first scoop looking out at Lake Mendota. The process by which you might generate these ideas is the focus of a new Communication Arts research project. By isolating different conditions, this study is discovering the optimal way to use artificial intelligence (AI) during the brainstorming process.

    December 1, 2025
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