Journalism and Communication ( M.S. )

1. Training/Research Orientation

• News and Journalism
• Communication
• Broadcasting and Television-Digital Media
• Advertising and Media Economics

2. Program Duration and Credit

Three years generally, the maximum school years are not longer than 5 years (including the extension time).
30 credits of courses in total, at least 19credits of academic courses.

3. Core Courses and Introduction

Studies on Journalism and Communication History
This course focuses on the occurrence and evolution law of the journalism and communication. It helps students to understand the evolution law of Chinese journalism history correctly, enhances academic quality and trains their basic skills in journalism and communication history research through learning of this course. Students could build a solid historical foundation for the professional study and research in the future.
The content of the course includes: the reflective study on the history of journalism and communication, the ancient origins of newspaper and the basic characteristics, the formation of modern journalism and news thought, nongovernmental newspaper business and liberal news thought, party newspapers and party’s journalistic thoughts, the news business and news thoughts of the Communist Party of China, journalism after the founding of People’s Republic of China (1949), journalism after the reform and opening-up policy was adopted.

Culture and Literature Research
The course provides common sense of Chinese culture for the graduate students of journalism and communication. Besides western resources, the indigenous culture is essential for the “journalistic professionalism”. Our thoughts of pre-qin scholars, historiographer culture and scholar’s political commentary contain the idea of “journalism” factor. Taking history as a mirror, we can comprehend how the things rise and fall. Modernization is not opposite to tradition; sometimes it has to be established with the help of traditional positive power. It is the changing age that journalism needs to participate for contribution of Chinese nation’s great rejuvenation and establishment of China’s image. So knowing our tradition is necessary. The research of journalism and communication in order to realize “localization”; also should be familiar with the tradition.
This course will introduce the important ideologists, school of thoughts in the history of China in detail. The contemporary value could be elucidated with emphasis for a certain reference nowadays.

Research Methods for Journalism and Communication
This course seeks to provide students with a understanding about the characteristic, method system and research process of social science research, and several main communication research methods as well.
Through teaching of the course, it aims to make students know the characteristic,method system and research process of social science research, they can master a communication research method , establish a systematic thinking system and promote their abilities to analyze and solve problems. This course focuses on learning empirical research methods, including these related topics such as operationalization of research problems, the design of questionnaire and the analysis of quantitative research like sampling. Contents mainly include the major theoretical origin of communication research method, the effect of quantitative methods in communication research, the design and technical operations of quantitative research, the writing of quantitative research reports,computer application in quantitative research (the use of SPSS in statistic analysis), and the latest developments of communication research, etc. The aim is to make students be able to study on communication with those methods like quantitative research, field survey and controlled experiment.

Media Research Design and Thesis Writing
This course combines theoretical teaching and practice running through classroom and outside of the classroom. The goal of the course is to guide postgraduates to finish a lager research design and thesis writing.
This course includes:

• Explaining the factors and methods of topic choosing bases on students’ literature reading. Guide students to develop their research designs by explaining many examples
• Literature Review. Discuss the significance of literature theoretically and analyze some cases helping students to distinguish the right or wrong way of literature writing. Students have to finish 2 works: reading the literature related to their topics and collecting and writing reviews
• Headline Making. Teach the aim and methods of headline making after finished the above two lessons
• Discuss common problems. Classifying and teaching related cases to enhance students’ cognition and draw their attention of the logic of the argument, the treatments of the argument procedures and other problems

Research on Communication Theory
This course aims to introduce students to basic concepts and research methods of many theories with deep influence, and to develop students’ abilities of analyzing communication phenomena from different theoretical perspectives. The course proceeds in a way of combining teacher’s teaching about classical writers’ statements of different academic schools and teacher-student discussion with students’ extracurricular reading.
The course contents include the following chapters. Chapter One is “Introduction of Communication Theory”, which introduces what are communication theories and what are mainstream theories. Chapter Two is“ The Perspective of Semiotics in Communication Research”. Chapter Three is “Language Use and Speech Act Theory”. Chapter Four is “Symbolic Interaction Theory”. Chapter Five is “Strategic Communication Study”. Chapter Six is “Cultural Study and Cultural Delight”, Chapter Seven is “Communication Theory and Mind Study”. Chapter Eight is “Theorized Research on Real Communication Problems”, it’s divided into seven parts to introduce communication theories with different research approaches respectively. In Chapter Nine, “The Use of Communication Theory” will stress on how to use classical theoretical perspectives to analyze communication phenomena.

Research on Media and Society
The purpose of this course is the combination of the different theoretical paradigm, to diversify the investigation into the topic for discussion under the framework of the media and society. It can help students to widen their sight; to comprehend the form of journalism and communication in the different historical periods, different political and economic background. The perspective of research and analytical ability for the individual independence formed by the understanding of the communication trend in the context of globalization, for the bottom of the theory and practice work in the future.
Course contents include multiple topics, such as the evolution of the media and social paradigm; the construction of the media and social discourse; critique of the political economics; theory of the modernization and development; the information society and its theory innovation, and so on. The course based on the historical review of western media,social paradigm and analysis of the reality. The discussion and research could proceed concretely with the media communication that involved in the management system, regulatory mechanism, media strategy, media discourse, news consciousness, news legal system issues. In the teaching process, we could integrated apply the methods of theoretical teaching, seminar, workshops and some other ways.

Research on New Media Communication
The purpose of this course is to help students to know about the condition, tendency and research methods of the new media research at home and abroad. The class will analyze research cases to cultivate students’ independent ability of new media communication research.
The course includes: the clarification of the definition of new media; the themes of new media research: the common themes of Chinese and western research, the Chinese research themes and the focus of the western research; the theoretical perspective of new media research: classical communication theory, critical orientation, technology and social perspective, media ecology, state-social theory, social presence theory, ultra interpersonal interaction theory, media richness theory, etc; analysis of new media research cases and methods; the latest tendency of new media; the introduction of mobile media and communication research at home and abroad.

4. Supervisors

Xiaohong Fang, Liping Gu, Xiaofeng Zhang, Zhenglin Luo, Quan liu, Ming Jing, Deshan Yu, Xiangshun Yu, Xi Zhuang, Jizhong Liu, Jun Zou, Shanbing Gao, Qiang Zhu, Chuanbin Zhang, Lei Zhang.