121 - 130 of 145 results for: COMM

The social and psychological processes involved in asking and answering questions via questionnaires for the social sciences; optimizing questionnaire design; open versus closed questions; rating versus ranking; rating scale length and point labeling; acquiescence response bias; don't-know response options; response choice order effects; question order effects; social desirability response bias; attitude and behavior recall; and introspective accounts of the causes of thoughts and actions.

Digital devices (e.g., computers, smartphones, wearables) and platforms (e.g., social media sites, forums, virtual worlds) mediate much of our daily life. Each time we use digital media for communication, information seeking, or entertainment, we leave behind psychologically revealing digital footprints. In this course, we will explore how digital footprints can be used to understand individual differences in thinking, feeling, and behaving. Class activities and assignments will require students to apply the concepts to their own research projects. Course enrollment limited to PhD-level students.

This will be a project-based course for graduate students to take a deep dive on a specific topic within media psychology. All topics will share an underlying focus on individual differences. Example topics include: describing individual differences in use of digital devices (e.g., computers, smartphones, wearables) and platforms (e.g., social media, forums, virtual worlds), explaining what may be driving such differences (e.g., psychological factors, contextual factors), applying and developing methodological approaches for understanding and assessing mediated personalities, and exploring applications of psychologically tailoring media to peoples characteristics and contexts. Students will work collaboratively with the instructor and other students in the course to produce a novel work by the end of the quarter.

Over the past decade, influencers and online content creators have become highly visible on social media platforms. From fashion and travel influencers posting glamourous pictures on Instagram to YouTubers and TikTokers sharing new dance moves, car repair tips, and beauty routines for different skin colors, the diversity and promise of social media creation turned the role of 'influencer' into a highly desirable - but deeply uncertain - career. In this course, we will draw on classical frameworks in communication, sociology, and organization studies to examine these forms of cultural production through the lenses of labor, power, and celebrity in contemporary societies. Please contact the instructor for permission to enroll.

This course presents a selection of influential ways of thinking about culture, media, technology, and institutions in contemporary societies. It is organized around different disciplinary and methodological traditions, including symbolic interactionism, Foucault, Bourdieu, feminist theory, neo-institutionalism, the sociology of translation, the e/valuation perspective, and racial capitalism, with a specific focus on how these concepts shed light on the interplay between media, culture, and institutions.

An overview of research in political communication with particular reference to work on the impact of the mass media on public opinion and voting behavior. Limited to Ph.D. students.

Combined with LAW 7036 (formerly Law 577). This course is intended to give students a basic understanding of the themes in the legal regulation of elections and politics. We will cover all the major Supreme Court cases on topics of voting rights, reapportionment/redistricting, ballot access, regulation of political parties, campaign finance, and the 2000 presidential election controversy. The course pays particular attention to competing political philosophies and empirical assumptions that underlie the Court's reasoning while still focusing on the cases as litigation tools used to serve political ends. Elements used in grading: Class participation and one day take home final exam. ( POLISCI 327C; LAW 577)

Internet platforms like Google and Facebook play an enormous role in our online speech and information environment today. This class will review the laws that shape platforms' decisions about online content, with a primary focus on intermediary liability laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Communications Decency Act Section 230 (CDA 230), and the EU's eCommerce Directive. The majority of course material will be from the U.S., but some will explore international models and in particular laws in the European Union. Some classes will explore the impact of related areas of law, including privacy law, and some will go beyond current legal models to explore forward-looking legislative and policy proposals. Important themes of the class include Constitutional and human rights constraints on intermediary liability laws; legal limits (or lack thereof) on platforms' enforcement of privatized speech rules under their Community Guidelines or Terms of Service; global enforcement of national laws requiring platforms to remove content; and tensions between the goals of intermediary liability law and those of privacy, competition, and other legal frameworks. Students will be encouraged to think pragmatically about the legal, operational, and product design choices platforms may make in response to particular laws, drawing on the instructor's experience handling such questions as Associate General Counsel at Google. Students will be responsible for (1) posting six reading response comments or questions to a class discussion board (these are due before class meets on six class days of your choice, they can be very brief and informal); (2) participating in class discussion, potentially including discussion of points raised in your written questions; and (3) completing a final examination.

This course offers a project-based orientation to methodological issues associated with the analysis of multivariate and/or longitudinal data in the social sciences. General areas to be covered include the manipulation/organization/description of the types of empirical data obtained in social science research, and the application/implementation of multivariate analysis techniques to those data. Students will, through hands-on analysis of their data, acquire experiences in the formulation of research questions and study designs that are appropriately tethered to a variety of advanced analytical methods.