Korea University School of Media & Commuication Graduate School of Journalism & Mass Communication

Communication Theory

<Mandatory Course for Master/PhD Program>

Research Method in Communication

<Mandatory Course for Master/PhD Program>

Communication Theories Seminar

<Mandatory Course for PhD Program>

Communication Methodology Seminar

<Mandatory Course for PhD Program>

This course provides basic concepts, methods of hypothesis testing, and theory construction of various journalism and communication phenomena in the 21st century modern society. The course also discusses functions and roles that mass media have played and will go in-depth on the cross-cultural influence that mass media have had on individuals, groups, communities, nations, and overall global society. In addition, the class will look into the impact mass media have had over diverse political and economic systems. 

Introducing the fundamentals of social research, this course helps students understand how philosophical paradigms, theories and research methods interact with each other. Students will be able to conduct empirical research by learning the basic principles and procedures of quantitative methods, such as survey, experiment and content analysis, and qualitative methods, such as ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory and case studies. 

Discussion on both ontological and epistemological foundation of human communication and the media is the principal focus of this course. The departures of discussion are: Marshall McLuhan and re-mediation theories for the media ontology; and the Frankfurt School and critical social philosophy for the media epistemology. Discussions reach an inquiry of critical social theories and their ‘value’ debates on human being, communication and the media in modern and post-modern contexts.

Diverse areas of the media and communication are critically reviewed from the perspective of historical studies. Essential point of departure is the development of media technologies seen in social history. The course ends with the case studies of media history from institutional history and/or micro-history approaches.

This course analyzes legal cases and ethical issues in the media industry from the perspective of laws. In particular, topics include freedom of press, defamation, privacy, copyrights, rights to know, rights to be forgotten, and other issues related to day-to-day journalism.

Epistemological foundations and methodological guidelines of such qualitative research methods as philosophical, historical, literature, and anthropological approaches will be discussed in this course. Deep understanding of historical document studies, micro-historical studies, textual analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography, in-depth interview and focus group interview will empower the students to be equipped with a capability for any qualitative data-based academic writing.

This class is designed to provide a general overview of how to research in Communication and related fields. With detailed discussion on the types and plans of research, students will learn 1) how to choose research topics and develop ideas, 2) various ways to examine the topics and ideas, 3) types of research that can be applicable to their chosen fields, and 4) how to prepare manuscripts.

This course provides an in-depth discussion of various communication theories and elaborates their theoretical and methodological applications on specific research problems. Class participants must explicate their major research concepts and test their theoretical models by innovatively using analytical tool boxes. This course is required for doctoral students. Advanced master students are able to participate in the class for new theory development. This class requires advanced conceptual thinking and pragmatic theory building efforts.

Students learn advanced quantitative research designs and methods, thereby producing a research paper that can be published in an academic journal. As a requirement for doctoral students, this course may focus on content analysis method for one semester, survey research method for another and so on.

This course discusses important theoretical approaches to media and gender and enables students to analyze critical issues of media and gender in contemporary Korean society.

This course examines how media perpetuate differences and discusses the role of media that can contribute to equality of diverse groups of people in multicultural society.

Based upon diverse theories and models of democracy, this course discusses the normative roles of the media in depth. Particularly, students will understand the philosophical foundations and principles of deliberative and participatory democracy and explore how to utilize various media platforms to improve the democratic qualities of a society.

This course is a comprehensive overview of key theoretical and methodological approaches and main research foci in the field of political communication. Particularly, students will understand the mechanisms underlying individuals’ political behavior and analyze how the media come into play in the process from interdisciplinary perspectives.

This class encourages students to discuss how traditional journalism has been transformed in the digital era. Students explore prominent cases of news either digital or mobile and reinterpret the role and meaning of journalism.

Reading a diversity of literature related to the journalist and news, students learn the principles and norms of journalism and explore theories of the function and role of journalism. The class is also focused on how to theorize the relationship between news and society as well as journalism and democracy.

This course overviews most up-to-date theoretical and practical issues with regard to the media’s political roles and their influence at various levels. Students will implement an original research project regarding an important phenomenon of media and politics, using a quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods approach.

Students learn the classic and contemporary theories related to source, message, medium, and audience factors that influence persuasion outcomes. Based on theoretical knowledge, students understand persuasion in interpersonal and mass-mediated contexts, which have practical implications for persuasion.

This course covers the basic concepts, the major theories, and the practice of advertising in the economic, social, cultural, and media environments of modern society. Students will gain basic knowledge about advertising by understanding the basic principles of advertising study and the entire process of advertising planning, production, research and media strategies. Especially, this course focuses on the theoretical approach to understanding the mechanism underlying advertising effects and the factors influencing them and looks into the social and cultural influences of advertising.

This course is designed to comprehend the systematic and comprehensive concepts and frameworks for understanding and analyzing consumer behavior. Students will learn key concepts and theories from a psychological perspective with focus consumer's decision-making process, such as motivation, information processing, family, group and cultural influences, and word of mouth communication. Furthermore, this course investigates the factors that influence consumer behavior by integrating various knowledge of adjacent studies, such as sociology, and discusses the way that apply them in real-life situations.

As the media environment changes, advertising effectively approaches target consumers via a diverse range of media, including the Internet, mobile and other digital media, as well as legacy media such as TV, newspapers, magazines, and radio. This course covers the key concepts and theories necessary to understand the nature of various advertising media, the relationship between advertising and media, the planning and execution of media strategy, and the assessment of the effectiveness of advertising in various media. Practical implications of such practices are also discussed.

This course focuses on the causes and consequences of consuming and producing entertainment contents. Specifically, students will learn the cultural, social, and psychological factors related to using entertainment contents, and the effects.We will discuss practical strategies to apply entertainment contents in strategic campaigns.

Students strengthen their theoretical base of public relations by learning basic concepts, perspectives and recent research findings. The acquired theoretical knowledge combined with practical knowledge derived from in-depth case studies enables students to better understand and solve communication problems of organizations in private and public sectors. Students will contribute to theoretical development of public relations by designing and completing a research project.

This course focuses on how health issues are shown in the media such as news, advertising, and entertainment contents, and how these media messages affect users’ health-related cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors. Based on an understanding of constructed reality in the media and the users’ subjective reality, practical strategies for health campaigns are discussed.

This course introduces theories and research findings of crisis communication and issues management. Examples of class discussion topics include actual cases of crises, conflicts, and issues of both private and public organizations, those organizations’ communication strategies and their possible effects on the public’s cognition, attitude, and behavior. Students will learn to design a research project to propose effective public-centered communication solutions to organizational problems.

The rapidly changing social and media environments create new themes and the need for new theories about advertising. With focus on a specific topic related to advertising, this course examines and discuss relevant phenomena and theories in depth. Especially, this course is designed to develop academic and practical understanding of the selected topic area through in-depth discussions of the latest theories.

This is a special topics course designed to investigate new theoretical developments in public relations and to timely address a variety of public relations issues that may emerge with social, cultural, technological, and organizational changes.

This course examines the media industries from an economic point of view. It provides microeconomic foundations, industrial organization models and antitrust tools needed to understand media firms, industries and policies.

This course introduces fundamental concepts and theories of management as well as recent business cases in media field. Through the course, students will not only be able to analyze media business cases, but also have insights in the media industry.

This course introduces concepts of new media as well as its impact on society as exploring diverse cases and studies of digital technology-driven innovation in media field. Students will learn how digital communication technologies are affecting individuals’ daily life and are transforming businesses and society.

This course gives an systematic understanding of emerging media, including virtual reality, artificial intelligence algorithm, robot, smart car and smart home, which will bring not only technological innovation but also business potentials and social, cultural and legal challenges.

This course provides an opportunity for studying global entertainment industry, including music, movie, game and broadcasting, and developing new research agenda. In particular, this course focuses on so-called interdisciplinary approach to understand the evolution and convergence of entertainment industry.

This course will focus on the role of entrepreneurship in the new global digital media ecosystem. In addition, this course will explore the roles and examples of entrepreneurs in finding and developing new businesses from existing but untapped market opportunities by responding to changing technology, markets, and user needs.

This course examines the law, institution, regulation, and policy issues in various media sectors. Topics may include media diversity and ownership/entry regulation, contents/advertising regulation, access regulation, re-transmission policies, competition policies, etc.

This is a specialized seminar-format class designed to discuss specific frontier topics related to media industries. The topics may vary semester by semester.

This course starts from the discussion on historical origin and development, and essential key words of Cultural Studies, since the 1960s. Some significant subjects of Cultural Studies will be elaborated in conjunction with their conceptual and theoretical implications.

The course introduces important topics in the study of media and cultural studies and encourages students to investigate various media and cultural phenomena.

This is an advanced course to contemplate the role of media producers in culture. With social, cultural, and economic backgrounds, it aims to understand the places media producers claim and the implication they have in the current society. The subjects of theoretical discussion in class include producers in the broadcasting sector in the traditional sense as well as prosumers emerging in the digital era.

This course explores media and audience from cultural studies perspectives. Through various research methods, students explore audiences who consume, use, and read media and popular culture.

This course provides a complete overview on film history and theories. Discussion on the history of film technologies, and of commercial and independent films will be followed by theoretical arguments on film industry, narrative, author, genre, star, post-modern theories and so on.

Through theory and production, the course examines how documentary constructs reality and discusses the role of documentary as alternative media.

This is an introductory course, surveying various theories related to broadcasting. It purports to understand social and cultural implication of broadcasting, while examining broadcasting from the past to those of contemporary society including various forms of the Internet-distribution services.

Basic concepts and theories essential for the critique or meta-critique of diverse visual cultures will be discussed. On the basis of key concepts and theories, an individual or group case study of visual culture criticism will be conducted.

This is a seminar course to understand the relationship between media and entertainment, as it emerges one of the most critical phenomena nowadays in media. To critically approach the relationship, the subjects include various content such as reality shows, talk shows and drama, to name a few.

This course analyses the main features and future prospective of media that perform various functions in the areas of contents, technology, narrative, and users of sports/e-sports industries.

This course is to survey theories of globalization and media, especially focusing on the popularity of content from Korea. By examining so-called Hallyu, the class is to understand critically the phenomena and importance of global communication.

This is a topic seminar geared toward updating the theories of broadcasting and visual contents reflecting the interests of each semester. The topic dealt in each semester can vary.

This is a topic seminar geared toward updating the theories of media and entertainment reflecting the interests of each semester. The topic dealt in each semester can vary.

This class is designed to provide a general overview of data management and analysis, basic statistics, and reports of results. Students will learn statistical techniques popularly used in Media and Communication field. When students have completed this course, they will be able to read and understand empirical research, analyze data, and report findings.

This course provides an overview of intermediate statistical techniques for communication research. For example, statistical techniques examining moderators or mediators will be discussed in depth. Additionally, other statistical techniques will be introduced as needs arise.

This course will focus on Big-Data, one of important forces for future society, and historical, technological, industrial impacts will be discussed. Also, for students’ research works, specific big-data applications and research studies will be analyzed.

This introductory course of data science aims to understand important concepts and various issues in the field of emerging data-based industries and sciences. It also includes a comprehensive review of literature and research.

Designed to study the basic grammar of programming language, for its particular use for web data collection and analysis (Pre-required: Media Data Science).

This course introduces various multivariate and data mining techniques to extract meaning from data related to media. It covers a variety of data mining problems, such as classification, prediction, clustering, and data visualization. Students will learn how to apply diverse analytical techniques in media research.

This course aims to discuss various issues of media-related data domains, and tackles to apply data scientific methods to analyze (big) media data and then makes students to write their own research papers.