Spring 2027

Law of Mass Communication

Law of Mass Communication covers freedom of speech and press, focusing on legal issues for media practitioners including censorship, libel, privacy, and media regulation.

offering recorded4 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Kathleen Culver3.6/5

Summary

1 / 3

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.46 GPA, 71.9% A/AB (n=96 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.55 GPA, 73.5% A/AB (n=98 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.50 GPA, 72.2% A/AB (n=72 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Interpret legal principles and doctrines related to free expression in general and press freedom specifically.

  • Identify theories, principles and doctrines and determine how they apply to practical situations.

  • Compare and contrast past and emerging controversies involving news media and the law.

  • Solve legal problems involving journalism and strategic communication.

  • Acquire the ability to collaborate effectively with other students in developing mastery of concepts and applying them.

  • Critically evaluate ideas from different sources, integrating (or contrasting) different theories, principles, and doctrines related to free expression.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Junior standing

  • Junior standing
JOURN 563

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Junior standing

Professors

Spring 2027
Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.00/5 from 1 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.46 GPA, 71.9% A/AB (n=96 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.55 GPA, 73.5% A/AB (n=98 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.50 GPA, 72.2% A/AB (n=72 letter grades). Includes jointly taught sections.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

KATHLEEN CULVER is recorded teaching in Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
DIS 301Classroom Instruction0 / 250
DIS 302Classroom Instruction0 / 250
DIS 303Classroom Instruction0 / 250
DIS 304Classroom Instruction0 / 250
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 1000

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.46 GPA, 71.9% A/AB (n=96 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.55 GPA, 73.5% A/AB (n=98 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.50 GPA, 72.2% A/AB (n=72 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Freedom of speech and press
  • Censorship, libel, and invasion of privacy
  • Access to information, electronic media regulation, and commercial speech

Skills

  • Interpret legal principles and identify how they apply to practical situations
  • Compare media controversies and solve legal problems in journalism
  • Collaborate on concepts and critically evaluate theories related to free expression

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Download part 1
Selected offering source records
JOURN 563 · Spring 2027

Law of Mass Communication

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:512:010761",
    "course_id": "JOURN 563",
    "course_uid": "course_56139ddba2b122fd80b45543",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "010761",
    "source_subject_id": "512",
    "title": "Law of Mass Communication",
    "credits_min": 4,
    "credits_max": 4,
    "typically_offered": "Fall, Spring"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

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No records available.

Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "6f741b8dd286b64aee6a85c775394894efe925349c135fef4b6efe1ddf188763",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}