The Communications and Culture course from the Fall 2016 semester provided students a deeper understanding of the history, theories, and methods of communications. The course lectures gave an introduction to basic theoretical foundations which could later apply to understanding the interdisciplinary traditions of communication. Additionally, it provided an exploration of the way in which theory and methodology inextricably intertwine and how their relationship shapes both inquiry and analysis. In this assignment, I will touch upon the paradigms, theories, and histories I learned throughout course content. In particular, I will articulate more information about the critical paradigm and a qualitative methodological paradigm. My second task in
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Ultimately, we have come to a point in history where there are numerous ways to categorize and understand theoretical paradigms. While no single model is more valuable than another, every paradigm came with a history and developed under particular pretext. Throughout the semester, Communications Studies were divided into five paradigms: Empirical Laws, Human Rules, Rhetorical, Systems, and Critical Paradigms. I feel most drawn to the Critical Paradigm of Communication research. Throughout my time at Fordham and in this course, I have always been drawn to cultural studies - a focus on understanding the real-life experiences of people – and the critical paradigm allows for a standard way of conducting this type of research. A Critical Theories Paradigm looks to examine media content for inherent power structures and attempts to make a positive social change as a result. The Critical Theories Paradigm provides a complement to my interest in how people use social media to create an identity and to consume and create content that they take pleasure in. Under a Critical approach, my research interest in studying individual’s social media habitats and the role social media platforms for its users. A critical approach is best for this type of research because the content is consistently being created, modified and shared for …show more content…
A Qualitative methodology is the most appropriate approach to my interest in understanding power relations, individual behaviors, and contributing to social justice. When using Qualitative methods, I could use a variety of approaches such as action research, focus group interviewing, and case studies. With the issues and theories that my work focuses on it would be most appropriate to develop and conduct qualitative audience reception analysis. I could even benefit performing open-ended interviews to explore individual meaning-making practices in regards to social media. A media product always has the potential of being read in various ways, and the messages intended by encoders are sometimes not the messages decoded by the receiver. This “miscommunication” is intriguing because the same media product could be shared with a large group of individuals and anyone in the group could potentially read it in different ways as a result of his or her ideas and views. Conducting interviews that are more open-ended will help to break the power relationship between interviewer and interviewee. Unstructured power relations would be most valuable to my research because I could gain an understanding of the physical, social and cultural contexts in which individuals lives and to learn about his or her behaviors and activities. While qualitative methods provide insight into the subjective lived experience, it is
Ultimately, we have come to a point in history where there are numerous ways to categorize and understand theoretical paradigms. While no single model is more valuable than another, every paradigm came with a history and developed under particular pretext. Throughout the semester, Communications Studies were divided into five paradigms: Empirical Laws, Human Rules, Rhetorical, Systems, and Critical Paradigms. I feel most drawn to the Critical Paradigm of Communication research. Throughout my time at Fordham and in this course, I have always been drawn to cultural studies - a focus on understanding the real-life experiences of people – and the critical paradigm allows for a standard way of conducting this type of research. A Critical Theories Paradigm looks to examine media content for inherent power structures and attempts to make a positive social change as a result. The Critical Theories Paradigm provides a complement to my interest in how people use social media to create an identity and to consume and create content that they take pleasure in. Under a Critical approach, my research interest in studying individual’s social media habitats and the role social media platforms for its users. A critical approach is best for this type of research because the content is consistently being created, modified and shared for …show more content…
A Qualitative methodology is the most appropriate approach to my interest in understanding power relations, individual behaviors, and contributing to social justice. When using Qualitative methods, I could use a variety of approaches such as action research, focus group interviewing, and case studies. With the issues and theories that my work focuses on it would be most appropriate to develop and conduct qualitative audience reception analysis. I could even benefit performing open-ended interviews to explore individual meaning-making practices in regards to social media. A media product always has the potential of being read in various ways, and the messages intended by encoders are sometimes not the messages decoded by the receiver. This “miscommunication” is intriguing because the same media product could be shared with a large group of individuals and anyone in the group could potentially read it in different ways as a result of his or her ideas and views. Conducting interviews that are more open-ended will help to break the power relationship between interviewer and interviewee. Unstructured power relations would be most valuable to my research because I could gain an understanding of the physical, social and cultural contexts in which individuals lives and to learn about his or her behaviors and activities. While qualitative methods provide insight into the subjective lived experience, it is