Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2025 - CMNS 202 D100

Design and Method in Qualitative Communication Research (4)

Class Number: 2402

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 3 – Oct 11, 2025: Tue, 2:30–4:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

    Oct 12 – Oct 22, 2025: Tue, 2:30–4:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

    Oct 23 – Dec 2, 2025: Tue, 2:30–4:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Prerequisites:

    CMNS 110 with a minimum grade of C-.

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:

With the spread of AI, whatever we want to know is now just a few finger-taps away.  So why take courses on methodology and learn how to conduct research?  For Communication students, the answer should be straightforward.  Bias is structured into AI.  Its answers depend on the accuracy of the information feeding it and as AI cannibalizes the increasing volume of AI-generated data, the quality of its answers degrades, and can dangerously distort our understanding of reality.  It can be manipulated to spread false information and emotions like hate and fear, dividing societies into “us” and “them”.

AI thus makes it even more urgent for us to learn skills to:  (1) critically analyze the communication systems people use to understand the world; and (2) to conduct research to produce reliable knowledge to help solve urgent problems, whether climate change, hostility against gender diversity, cyberbullying, colonial and genocidal military operations.  In this context, CMNS 202 introduces students to qualitative methodology.  This methodology is concerned with the knowledge people use to interpret their worlds, shaping everything from their identities and what they believe to how they behave.

To investigate how societies generate knowledge, we need analytic techniques (methods) to study:  (1) societies’ systems of meaning, which give people frameworks to understand their worlds, as well as (2) how they can challenge these dominant understandings.  As such, CMNS 202 is concerned with the relationship between knowledge and power.  The course focuses on key qualitative methods used in Communication Studies:  textual analysis (semiotics); the study of emotions (affect theory); methods that examine the construction of normative bodies (Foucault); narrative analysis; and ethnography.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

  1. Understand that qualitative methodology is concerned with analyzing the systems of meaning (knowledge) societies use to understand, organize and interpret the world (verstehen).
  2. Learn how marginalized groups can resist their society’s dominant systems of meaning that aim to negatively construct their identities as well as control their behaviours and beliefs.
  3. Understand that, in contrast to quantitative methodology and producing “objective” knowledge, qualitative methodology starts with the premise that all knowledge is structured by the values and the agendas of whoever produces it (including the researcher).
  4. Understand that doing research involves relations of power and thus ethical responsibilities.
  5. Introduction to using three qualitative methods, including semiotics, narrative analysis, and ethnography.

Grading

  • Tutorial Attendance 5%
  • Tutorial Exercises(5%) & Participation(5%) & Presentation(5%) of Key Concepts/Research Problem or Issue 15%
  • In-Class: 2 Pop Quizzes (2.5% x 2) 5%
  • In-Class: Mid-Term Exam 15%
  • Assignment #1: Discipline, Norms & the Body 20%
  • Assignment #2: Narratives, History, National Identity (might be replaced with a final in-class "Key methods & Concepts" quiz) 20%
  • Assignment #3: Ethnography, Positionality, Perspective & Voice 20%

NOTES:

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relationship to established university-wide practices. In addition, the School will follow Policy S10.01 with respect to Academic Integrity, and Policies S10.02, S10.03 and S10.04 with regard to Student Discipline. For further information visit: www.sfu.ca/policies/Students/index.html.

NOTE -- Tutorials do not start in Week 1 (3-9 September 2025) -- unless specified by the Instructor.  If your tutorial is scheduled to occur prior to your first lecture -- please check with the course Canvas page, or with your Instructor (via email), to find out if you will have a tutorial in the first week of Fall Semester 2025.   If your tutorial occurs after the first lecture, then just ask in the first lecture whether or not there will be tutorials during Week 1.

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

Online articles will be available on Canvas.

REQUIRED READING NOTES:

Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

At SFU, you are expected to act honestly and responsibly in all your academic work. Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty harms your own learning, undermines the efforts of your classmates who pursue their studies honestly, and goes against the core values of the university.

To learn more about the academic disciplinary process and relevant academic supports, visit: 


RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION

Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.