“Applications: Using Field Work to Research Imagined Communities.”
This is a practice research project, focused on applying fieldwork in the realm of imagined communities. Students of this elective course will develop their skills of conceptualising, designing and conducting their own empirical research project. The focus is on qualitative methods, and in particular, on doing ethnography on media-related topics. The research project emphasises that the subject of enquiry is open to a variety of topics and themes; video-gaming, Kpop or football fans, environmental groups, diasporic communities, and international student communities, among many others, offer opportunities for applied qualitative research methods. Here, the stress is on the role that the media plays in creating a sense of belonging or an imagined community.
Students will develop their empirical research project from the first steps onwards: forming research questions, using methods in the ‘field’, and will ultimately produce an academic essay, which will be also discussed or reviewed with peers in the class.
The aims of the course are:
1) To be familiarised with qualitative research methods
2) Conduct close readings of method literature, core concepts, and exemplary studies of belonging/ imagined communities, and the ways in which these concepts are applied to the study of media.
3) Framing Research question/s.
4) Designing one's own empirical research project.
5) Fieldwork Application.
6) Writing an academic essay.