Programming for communication: overcoming motivational barriers to computation for all

Computer science as a discipline is failing to reach a diverse audience. As a result, computational illiteracy threatens many groups of underserved students—women, minorities and possibly other, as yet undocumented groups, such as students of the humanities. If learning programming were contextualized in domains relevant to different audiences, more students would be motivated to learn to program. I contend that teaching computer science in the context of digital media manipulation will attract and engage many students who would otherwise not choose to learn programming.