Required graduate seminar
Although humans have been thinking about and theorizing about media since antiquity, we have only recently – within the past century – begun to systematically, even scientifically, study the media. We now consider everything from the media’s role in society to its psychological “effects” on those who consume it; from the content of the messages it disseminates to the ideologies underlying its production and consumption. In this course we will look at the past, present, and future of media research: what do researchers think worthy of study, and what methods do they use to study it? We’ll ask ourselves similar questions: What, in our mediated environment, deserves study? What can and should we study, and why should anybody care? How can we match our own intellectual and creative interests to particular research subjects and methodologies? What does “research” mean in this digital age, this era of ubiquitous information? What tools can we use to study the media, and what kinds of information and knowledge can those tools yield? How do we determine the credibility of a source or generate our own data? Furthermore, how can we use the media themselves in the study of various social or psychological phenomena? And, conversely, how can we use research to help guide our media production? Our consideration of these questions throughout the semester will prepare us to create a grant proposal for either a media studies research project or a research-based media production project.
Spring 2006: Syllabus
Fall 2005: Syllabus
Summer 2005
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Archived Lessons for Summer 2005 Online Course
“Exploring Topics and Beginning Research”
“Finding Funding”
“Production and Culture Industry Research”
“Historical Research”
“Critical Approaches”
“Discourse Analysis”
“Qualitative Methods”
“Media as Research Instruments”
“Media in Ethnography”
“Quantitative Methods“