Maastricht, Netherlands

Media Representations and Research Methods: Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics and News Framing

online course
when 22 August 2022 - 2 September 2022
language English
duration 2 weeks
credits 2 EC
fee EUR 399

The tweets of US-President Donald Trump, the heated social media debate on Greta Thunberg and the many angles on migration stress the pivotal role of texts and images in our societies. This course teaches you the analytical skills to study the possible meanings of textual and visual media representations. Interactive lectures offer you concepts and methods to examine what combinations of words and/or visual elements mean in terms of a broader debate in society. These lectures further help you to understand how national identities and power relations affect the interpretations of media representations. Your individual assignment concerns a short paper, in which you apply a method to study one or two news articles, cartoons or social media posts. Specially for this Summer School, Dr Leonhardt van Efferink developed a template that helps you to write a well-structured course paper. On top of this, he offers individual feedback in class and active personal tutoring by e-mail. Finally, his support includes a simple framework to develop focused, consistent and transparent research questions.

Course leader

Dr. L.A.S. van Efferink

Target group

Basic knowledge of textual and visual analysis is recommended.

Aimed at Bachelor/Master/PhD students in Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, Journalism, International Relations and Political Sciences. Moreover, various professionals and students with other backgrounds also successfully completed earlier editions of this course. If in doubt, please contact Maastricht Summer School.

Course aim

1. Designing an analytical framework to study media representations with textual and/or visual elements (e.g. newspaper/magazine articles with photos, cartoons and social media posts).
2. Developing a research method that draws on critical discourse analysis, social semiotic analysis and/or news framing analysis, in line with your research objectives.
3. Explaining the role of the national and ideological contexts in which (social) media content is being produced.
4. Understanding the complexity of text-image relations and their role in meaning-making processes.
5. Producing a research design and dataset for your thesis or dissertation that is manageable.

Fee info

EUR 399: Tuition fee

Scholarships

No scholarships are available for this course.