Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An introduction to interpretive approaches in communication inquiry. Topics include ethics, paradigms, conceptualizing the research process, documentary research, historical methods, discourse or textual analysis, ethnographic research, and performative research. Students with credit for CMNS 262 may not take CMNS 202 for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course introduces several of the main methodological approaches to qualitative communication research. Qualitative methodology questions the very nature of media and social phenomena which are often taken to be “natural” and “common sense” in our everyday life. Recognizing the social construction of reality, students are expected to deconstruct these phenomena with a wide range of qualitative methods including documentary research, interviews, discourse analysis, participant action research, and, etc. In detail, students will learn how to choose a theoretical orientation, how to define research problems and formulate research questions, how to select research methods and design research procedures, and finally, how to gather data, interpret results and report findings. In addition to this, students will engage in critical and reflective discussions of research ethics and their responsibilities as researchers.

Throughout the semester, students will be challenged to consider the research process in relation to the power dynamics of contemporary academia and knowledge production. This will enable students, as researchers, to understand the relationship between knowledge and power and how various methods enact power in distinct ways, thereby shaping differences in their respective processes of knowledge production. Instead of carrying out extensive library research, students will be required to conduct research assignments, confronting real-life issues with the tools of critical inquiry, and ultimately contribute to scholarly and political debates about the world around them.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

1. Understand the relationship of knowledge to power.
2. Understand your own role as a researcher.
3. Differentiate between qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
4. Basic applications of qualitative methods and key considerations when choosing to work with them.
5. Understand the ethics and politics of doing research.
6. Critically examine what appears as ‘common sense’ and ‘natural’ in everyday life.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: