Asking questions that can be answered:
from epistemology to methodology
PhD intensive seminar
*Preliminary program*
Time: October 3-7, 2011
Place: University of Copenhagen, Southern Campus
Credits: 5 ECTS
Instructors: Professor W. Russell Neuman,
University of Michigan, USA; Professor Klaus
Bruhn Jensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
One of the key challenges of developing,
conducting, and completing a PhD project is how
to turn grand theoretical issues into concrete
empirical questions that can be answered in
time, and as a specific contribution to its area
of study. This was brought home in an imagined
dialogue between two figures of
twentieth-century American social science C.
Wright Mills and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. Mills reads
aloud the first sentence of The Sociological
Imagination (Mills, 1959): ?Nowadays men often
feel that their private lives are a series of
traps.? And Lazarsfeld replies: ?How many men,
which men, how long have they felt this way,
which aspects of their private lives bother
them, do their public lives bother them, when do
they feel free rather than trapped, what kinds
of traps do they experience, etc., etc., etc.?
(Stein, 1964: 215). Both perspectives are
needed; the question is how to join
epistemology, methodology, empirical evidence,
and theoretical interpretation in practice.
The intensive seminar provides a forum for PhD
students in media and communication studies to
meet this challenge. It invites the
participation of PhD students at different
stages of their dissertation projects: the
relationship between questions and answers is
integral to the design of studies, but also to
the analysis of evidence, as well as the
interpretation of findings and insights. The
organizers, further, invite participants with
qualitative, quantitative, and multi-method
projects: there are important similarities as
well as differences in the kinds of questions
that different methodologies ask and in the answers they can provide.
The intensive seminar is co-taught by two
experienced researchers with complementary
competences in the humanities and the social
sciences, both with a strong international and
interdisciplinary profile. They will share book
projects in progress concerning communication
theory and research methodology (Jensen, in
preparation; Neuman, in preparation) these
volumes will constitute the central readings for
the seminar. The summer school as a whole will
emphasize intensive collaboration about the
general challenge that PhD students share,
departing from the projects of the participants.
Preparation and participation
· 15 page paper on the PhD student?s own project
· 5 page commentary on another participant?s paper
· Approximately 600 pages of readings
· Presentation of own paper
· Response to other participant?s paper
Day format
· ?Keynote? lectures one by each
instructor on the theme of the day, followed by plenary discussion
· Lunch
· Group exercises: participants? projects related to the theme of the day
· Debriefing and plenary discussion
· Informal advising session with instructors, and among participants
· Dinner
· Social activities
Week format themes
· Day 1: Knowledge interests: why do you want to know about what?
· Day 2: Research design: what can(not) be known about the question?
· Day 3: Data collection: what is (not) relevant?
· Day 4: Data analysis: coding, categorization, interpretation, modeling?
· Day 5: Publication / making public: who wants to know?
References
Jensen, K. B. (Ed.). (in preparation). A
Handbook of Media and Communication Research:
Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies (2nd
ed.). London, New York: Routledge.
Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological
Imagination. London: Oxford University Press.
Neuman, W. R. (in preparation). The Structure of Communication.
Stein, M. (1964). The Eclipse of Community: Some
Glances at the Education of a Sociologist. In A.
Vidich, J. Bensman & M. Stein (Eds.),
Reflections of Community Power. New York: Wiley.
For updated information and signing up,
http://phd.hum.ku.dk/mediacom/courses/asking_questions/
(kbj /at/ hum.ku.dk)
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
Professor, dr.phil.
Film and Media Studies Section
Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication
University of Copenhagen
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
(kbj /at/ hum.ku.dk)
www.media.ku.dk
Tel +45-35328100
Fax +45-35328110
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