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Unit 2: Knowing Continued.
5 Other ways of knowing…. Research
Ok, big step to the meta here but we’re going to briefly go over the broad concept of research to situate what this course, social scientific, is all about. If you’ve already taken 1306: Humanistic, or perhaps another course in this department from a rhetoric or media studies professor, you’re probably starting to notice that the social scientists approach things a lot differently. That matters because the way you approach research matters…but we’ll get more into that later. For now… Take it away student authors!
Think of your high school chemistry class, you probably did experiments. Those experiments are similar to social scientific research, but instead of beakers and test tubes, we see the effects of the world on humans.
Research is often categorized into three major approaches:
The humanities are academic disciplines focused on modes of thought and expression through art, history, literature, religion, ethics, philosophy, and languages. The study and application of humanities disciplines allows critical reflection and understanding of diverse heritage and traditions in relation to individual and communal experiences. Humanistic disciplines emphasize critical thinking and writing, tools that are essential for almost every career path.
The focus of humanities research is interpreting cultural texts and human experiences
Critical Cultural Studies
Critical Cultural research emphasizes critical inquiry into the broadly defined ways that cultural discourses, practices, and performances contribute to, resist, and transform relations of power in society, particularly as related to communication-based problems of class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, national identity, (dis)ability, environment, and globalization. We focus on fostering a more equitable and democratic public sphere as a way to promote social justice. Critical cultural faculty often conduct their inquiry into a variety of forms communication, including rhetorical, mediated, and interpersonal. Example projects include analysis of the political economy of the dark web, Korean war memory, performance of childbearing identities in families, mediated portrayals of African American and Asian Americans, political and cultural underpinnings of obesity, tactics of activism in the U.S. and China, postcolonial memory, and environmental justice.
Critical cultural approaches primarily aim to challenge dominant ideologies and empower marginalized voices
Communication research is a type of scientific research. They both propose a question and test it through observation. Scientific research is a broad term that covers many different research areas (e.g., communication, psychology, anthropology), where the focus is on different aspects of society. Communication researchers study a communication process. We’re interested in how people exchange information, how they use messages to create “meaning”, and what happens when meaning isn’t shared. We’re interested in information processes. We study information (even everyday ways of knowing!) creation, use, exchange, and breakdown in different contexts (e.g., family, organizational), across different channels (e.g., social media, face-to-face), in and through the media (e.g., representations of BIPOC, older adults, or health issues), and within and across different cultures.
In this class you will learn about social scientific research methods.
COMM:1305 Comm. Research in Real Life (formerly known as:) Understanding Communication: Social Scientific Approaches 3 s.h.
Social scientific methods used to generate knowledge about communication processes; basic tools necessary to conduct and evaluate communication research; epistemological perspectives, research procedures, and data analysis; readings and hands-on activities.
Humanistic methods and theories used to generate knowledge about communication processes; basic tools necessary to conduct and evaluate communication research in humanities subdisciplines; epistemological perspectives, research procedures, and critical practices; readings and hands-on activities.
definition
the activity of conducting intellectual investigations into the observable world.
