COM 2600 Seminar in Media and CommunicationMethod Practice I: New Media Communication
Students identify a pressing contemporary social concern, research the issue, and design a small-scale quantitative study to explore the topic.
Potential concerns could be, for example, young mother’s homelessness, migration crisis, racism, homophobia, domestic violence, poverty, sexism/abuse etc.
Based on studying scholarly texts on the topic, students formulate a research question and/or a hypothesis, selecta method (e.g. a survey or a quantitative content analysis) for collecting and processing the data, answer research question(s), and write the report.
The report (8 pages) explains the research process from beginning to an end in detail. The paper should include a scholarly section focusing on the background of the topic, explanation of the quantitative method used for collecting and analyzing data, description, justification, and analysis of data, presentation and discussion of research results, and a conclusion.
At least one scholarly source required in addition to the class readings.Suggested reading: Messner, M. & Garrison, B. (2010) Treadwell, D. (2011) Chapters1-111.
1. What, in your view, is one of the most pressing concerns of our time? For example, climate change?
Read Treadwell chapters for quantitative research and decide on the topic that is feasible to study using quantitative approach.For example, climate change coverage and its impact on mental health?
2.Conduct a scholarly search on the topic of your choice to examine and assess how other scholars have approached your topic.
Reference the sources to discuss the theoretical background of your study and refine and justify your own disposition.
3.Formulate a research question of your own, and a hypothesis. For example, what is the impact of climate change media coverage on mental health of the millennials and the elderly?
Hypothesis: The magnitude of climate change coverage increases anxiety and stress experienced by both the millennials and the elderly.
4.Design methodological tools: for example, decide how to operationalize climate change coverage and mental health (anxiety and stress); how to make them measurable?
For the independent variable (media coverage), you could draw upon existing literature, and design a survey to measure its link with aspects of mental health(dependent variable)OR you could design and conduct a content analysis of media coverage to establish the fact that climate change coverage has increased over the past years, and then design a survey to address the link between the independent and dependent variable (mental health).
5.Process, analyze, present, and discuss the data.
6.Revisit your hypothesis to prove, revise, or reject it. For example, extensive climate change coverage increases anxiety and stress more among the millennials than the elderly.
If this is the case, how to address and exclude other possible reasons for your findings, e.g. the assumption that perhaps the elderly are equally, if not more, worried than the millennials, but just do not talk about it?
7.Summarize and discuss your findings in your report (appr. 8 pages, 1,5 spaced).
