Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students will be able to: • To work in a team • Adopt a social science perspective on political communication • Identify a research objective • Collect data through a web-based literature search • Analyse a body of quantitative data • Synthesise and communicate the results of their research

Goals

In this course, students will work in groups to carry out a research project in political communication. They will follow a precise working method to progress from the definition of a research question to the writing of a collective research report. During the academic year 2019-2020, the work will be devoted to the communication of political elites (governments, parliamentarians, party representatives) on Twitter.

Content

Students will complete their work in the following seven steps: Step 1: Determine the research objective Step 2: Determine the purpose of the comparison (who and what to compare) Step 3: Establish a coding scheme Step 4: Collect a corpus of tweets Step 5: Code the corpus of tweets Step 6: Analyse the results Step 7: Communicate the results orally and in writing

Assessment method

The evaluation of the course is based on the students' regular work. In the first session, the group mark is broken down as follows 1) Reflective report on the collaborative method and tools - 3 points 2) Intermediate reports - 8 points 3) Oral presentations - 4 points 4) Final report - 5 points Because of the continuous nature of the interim reports, it will not be possible for the student to repeat this test in the second session. The points awarded in the first session for these reports (8 points) will therefore be carried over to the second session. In the second session, the points related to point 2 are frozen. Students are invited, individually this time, to retake papers 1, 3 and 4.

Language of instruction

Français