Spring 2008 Graduate Course Descriptions

PDF of Spring 08 Course Offerings

523.     Field Methods in Communication Research
           Sender

This course is designed to introduce graduate students in the social sciences to ethnography as a formal research method, drawing on case studies, "how to" materials, and writings from a variety of disciplines. We will focus on the theory, logic, and practice of fieldwork, specific methodological and ethical issues associated with studying people at first-hand, and current debates about what constitutes the bounds and limits of the ethnographic enterprise more generally. This course presumes some introductory undergraduate training in qualitative methods.

531.     Public Opinion and Elections
           Johnston

This is a reading course on the mainstream of research about elections and public opinion. The focus tends to be on material originating in and concerned with the United States, but due attention is paid to classic work from or on other countries, and the propositions are meant to be quite general. Historical, social, or institutional context intrude mainly as they are necessary to test or condition otherwise general propositions. The books and articles occupy the theoretical or empirical high ground and constitute a sort of canon. Topics include the key early voting studies, success or failure in the export of those early ideas, the rational choice incursion into electoral studies, the multifaceted debates over the quality of democratic choice, the foundations of opinion as expressed in survey response, communications factors and campaign dynamics, and the current state of the field.

555.     Social Networks
           Hampton

This course is a non-mathematical introduction to the social network perspective. The social network approach is the study of the relations linking persons, organizations, interest groups, states, etc. Network analysis examines how the structure of social relations allocates resources, constrains behavior, and channels social change. Participants in this course will discuss the application of classical and contemporary theories and methods of network analysis to sociological questions. Topics include community, social capital, the flow of information and resources, and computer networks as social networks.

622.     Communicating Memory
           Marvin/Zelizer

This course considers the theoretical and empirical literature concerning the construction of social memory in relation to media products and processes. Students will undertake individual research projects investigating memory constructions in professional media routines and through ritual processes of group maintenance.

624.     Applied Regression Analysis
           Hennessy

This course focuses on the use of regression analysis and other related statistical methods that are appropriate when experimental control is low or nonexistent. The main purposes of the course are: to convey complete familiarity with regression techniques to enable students to understand the application of regression in communication research literature, to be able to apply these procedures at the most advanced level properly in their own research, to be able to diagnose when violations of regression assumptions are present in data and correct for these conditions, and to lay the foundations for more advanced studies in categorical data analysis (e.g., binary and multinomial logit and probit) and structural equations modeling (SEM). The course assumes knowledge of introductory statistics through summary statistics, confidence intervals, t-tests, F tests, scatter diagrams, and the logic of statistical association. The course begins with a detailed review of bivariate regression. Students can use either STATA or SPSS to analyze artificial and actual data sets. However, there are some procedures and tests that are not available in SPSS, so if you are indifferent to the choice between the two, use STATA.

642.     Diffusion of Innovation
           Katz

How things (and ideas) spread, with special reference to the linkages between media and interpersonal networks Classic writings (Tarde, Sorokin, Simmel) on diffusion processes will be reviewed in the light of contemporary research. A variety of case studies originating in different disciplines will be compared.

699.     Advanced Project in a Medium
           Staff

Proposal written in specified form and approved by both the student's project supervisor and academic advisor must be submitted with registration. Open only to graduate degree candidates in communication.

703.     International Communication: Power and Flow
           Price, M.

This course will address old and new patterns of communications flow across national and societal borders, taking account of media technologies, mutual perceptions, rhetorical forms, and the balance of power and influence in a globalizing world.

760.     Social Constructions of Reality
           Krippendorff

This seminar inquires into the principles and processes by which realities come to be socially constructed and discursively maintained. It serves as an introduction to the emerging epistemology of communication, which is concerned less with what communication is than with what it does, constitutes, and actively maintains, including when being studied. The seminar develops analytical tools to understand how realities establish themselves in language and action, how individuals can become entrapped in their own reality constructions, how facts are created and institutions take advantage of denying their constructedness. After reading several exemplary studies, students explore the nature of a construction on their own. The seminar draws on the discourse of critical scholarship and emancipatory pursuits, which are allied with feminist writing, cultural studies, and reflexive sociology. It is committed to dialogical means of inquiry and takes conversation as an ethical premise.

799.     Independent Research
           Staff

Proposal written in specified form and approved by both the student's project supervisor and academic advisor or another member of the faculty must be submitted with registration.

802.     Global & Comp Media Systems
           Kraidy

This graduate seminar will explore the comparative approach to global, regional and national media systems. It is organized around one broad question: How would the comparative media systems approach be theoretically and empirically modified when we take into account new worldwide dynamics such as regionalization and localization, and when we place non-European and non-North American media systems at the center of analysis? The course covers global media which may include African, Asian, Middle-Eastern and Latin American national and/or regional systems.

815.     Exper Design & Iss Causality
           Mutz

The main goal of this course is to familiarize students with experiments, quasi-experiments, survey experiments and field experiments as they are widely used in the social sciences. Some introductory level statistics background will be assumed, though this is a research design course, not a statistics course. By the end of the course, students will be expected to develop their own original experimental design that makes some original contribution to knowledge. Throughout the course of the semester, we will also consider how to deal with the issue of causality as it occurs in observational studies, and draw parallels to experimental research.

833.     Pub Space, Pub Spheres
           Mitchell

The purpose of this seminar is to explore the transformation of urban public spaces and its importance for the structuring of public spheres, modes of citizenship, and the right to the city. In doing so, it will examine how urban public spaces create part of the conditions of possibility for the formation of urban public spheres and how the nature of public space is a critical determinant not only of possibilities for democratic communication, but especially for social justice – the right to the city.

836.     Asian Translations
           Erni

This course attempts to explore this question: in the (re)turn to both distributive and recognition justice, how will cultural studies and communication critically articulate with human rights as a global professional, interdisciplinary, and humanitarian practice? We shall only have to note two conjuncture developments so as to ascertain the significance of a necessary encounter among culture, communication, and rights. First, the new and persistent atrocities linked to state and inter-state violence, including prison torture, poverty, epidemics, (war on) terrorism, and genocide, have precipitated new social movements that act in concert with international human rights law. To these movements, cultural studies and communication studies have had limited institutional, dialogic, or procedural connection/ collaboration. Second, the legal field of human rights has been engaging in a critical response to judicial and extra-judicial reform issues at the national and international levels through deconstructive tactics. Some have explicitly referenced the theories and practices associated with cultural studies and communication, and thus offered a critical reassessment of theories of power, govern mentality, and institutions. In turn, however, cultural studies and communication studies have advanced with only a marginal concern with the moment of “rights” within cultural struggles. In this course, we shall consider the conditions of possibility, theoretically as well as strategically, for overcoming the apparent non-correspondence between culture/communication and rights, or between culture/communication and the law. Special attention will be made to the rigorous development of cultural studies in the “inter-Asian” context over the past dozen years. The contested particularizes associated with inter-Asia with respect to the study of rights will raise crucial questions about the geopolitics of the circulation of rights discourse in global terms.

837.     Advanced Topics in Public Health
           Hornik

Communication. This seminar has two purposes. Students will closely review current interesting studies in public health communication: their research questions, approaches to design, and conclusions. Also students will develop original research proposals, receiving feedback from other students as well as the instructor.

899.     Master’s Thesis
           Staff

Registration will be accepted only upon the satisfactory completion of at least eight course units of approved graduate work in communications (including all other required courses), prior preparation recommended by the student's faculty adviser, and committee approval of a written thesis proposal.

990.     Master’s Thesis
           Staff

The M.A. student who has completed all course work and previously enrolled in COMM 899 but has not satisfactorily completed the thesis must register and pay a General Thesis Enrollment tuition (which does not include Student Health Service coverage) to remain eligible for the degree. This registration is required within the 6-year from-admission time limit until all degree requirements are met. A student without an approved leave of absence who fails to register in the Annenberg School each semester will be considered to have withdrawn from candidacy for the degree.

995.     Dissertation
           Staff

Doctoral candidates, who have completed all course requirements and have an approved dissertation proposal, work on their dissertation under the guidance of their dissertation supervisor and other members of their dissertation committee.

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