NM2104 - Qualitative Communication Research Methods Review

NM2104

Taken in: AY20/21 Semester 2

Lecturer: Prof Angela Li Ke

Tutor: Ho Wei Yang

Grading:

All Individual Work

• 20% - Tutorial (15%) and Forum Participation (5%)
• 20% - Media Diary
• 10% - Interview Questions
• 20% - Visual Analysis
• 30% - Final Project: Digital Ethnography (10% Presentation, 20% Submission)

Note: This module was conducted entirely online for this semester

M: My favourite mod taken in NUS so far! Came in thinking the module would be boring (I mean... Research... Eh...) but I thoroughly enjoyed all the assignments. Some friends of mine had gripes about the module being too 'fluff' but I'm more than okay with that LOL, I love writing about useless things and this module is exactly that. The assignments are all pretty broad and open-ended -- you're left to pick your own topics yourself so I really enjoyed doing them. (For e.g., my research question for the 'interview questions' assignment was "How did the use of media facilitate romantic relationships between Singaporean couples who were living separately during the period of circuit breaker from April to June of 2020?" and final project was "How do online spaces like MapleStory facilitate the formation of relationships?" Let's be real, what other mod is gonna let me write about my stupid gaming experiences for 2000 words? FAS1101 had me spend much more time on a topic I was much less interested in.

Prof Angela mentioned that this was her first ever time teaching in NUS, so maybe that was why she didn't seem 100% accustomed to running a module as other Profs typically would. She didn't record any of her lectures, so you have to listen to them live -- but this wasn't so bad since each lecture was really short, around 45 minutes each. She also released instructions for each assignment just one week before which tended to get me a bit fidgety since we're usually given a longer timespan to work on each assignment for other modules -- though this didn't become a problem in the end since I didn't actually face any trouble meeting the deadlines for submission.

If you're a CNM student, this module is compulsory, but if you're looking to take this as a UE, I definitely recommend it (if the syllabus remains like this and if you like writing). I honestly feel that I didn't learn all too much as much of what was taught came off as common sense or otherwise totally irrelevant (cue the 'paradigm' jokes), but I still greatly enjoyed watching lectures and attending tutorials with the best tutor of all time Ho Wei Yang! Please take his class if you're given the choice, you can thank me later. I would not have enjoyed the module or gotten as good of a grade as I did if he wasn't there to guide us through Prof Angela's at times, obscure and confusing instructions. But she's a really nice Prof! And this is her first time, so her teaching will definitely only improve from here. <3

ZH: This is one of the core modules that CNM students have to take, so this review won't be much about whether you should take it, but what you should look out for. The content is about qualitative research. If quantitative research is about numbers and figures, qualitative is more about interviews and stories. In our case, it's a little like understanding communications phenomena by paying close attention to smaller groups of subjects instead of large amounts of data.

This module was fun and lightweight. After a few weeks I stopped paying attention to lectures and only did half the readings because the projects don't exactly make use of everything that is covered. For example, the week 13 lecture was about ethics but sure as hell no one was going to pay attention let alone show up, because we were all working on our final projects. There are no exams or quizzes, just assignments. These assignments might change but I believe they are largely the same over the years. I compared this semester's projects with those my friend bought from carousell, and only the media diary is new this semester. Each assignment, save for the final, is due within a week of the release of the prompt.

Overview of Assignments

Media Diary: This is the first assignment that was done in week 3. You basically had to record your media use habits for 2 days and write an essay describing why you use the media you use, what purposes they serve, etc. It's very similar to writing a story, and they call it "Thick Description" in the context of the module. My main gripe is that this was the first assignment when we were still new to the concept so I wasn't quite sure what they were expecting, and ended up writing a little off-topic. If they have this assignment again in the coming years, try and focus your writing on the two days only.

Interview Questions: A portion of the content covered is how to formulate good interview questions in order to perform good qualitative research. There's little to be said about this, just read the textbook and lecture slides on some pointers. Your tutors will also help you. Good thing is you don't actually have to interview anyone.

Visual Analysis: For this semester, you had to pick any print advertisement of your choice and do a writeup on the meaning behind the advertisement. This includes surface level meanings like the intended meaning, and cultural meanings such as for example, kitchen/cleaning product advertisements using women in the kitchen because of how women are perceived in cultures. This should be pretty understandable. Thing is, I still don't see how it relates to the module's content on qualitative research, but maybe that's just me. I hope I'm not the only one?

Digital Ethnography: The final project has you conducting a digital ethnography of a medium of your choice, but it has to relate to commmunications somehow. Basically, pick a digital platform like Instagram, Youtube, Twitch, video games, etc. that have people on them, and engage in the platform for 3 hours, then write an essay (Making use of "Thick" description) on your research question. The RQ can be something like "Why do people use this platform", or "What do people do on this platform", or really just go in and analyse whatever trends or phenomena you observe. For this, I would recommend making use of the readings. Some of them are excerpts of ethnographies, both digital and physical, which you may find inspiration from.

Overall, this was a fun module with low stakes as there were no tests or exams. I found the readings a little excessive, so I only read the ones that seemed relevant to the assignments. It's a shame that the lecture content and assignments did not overlap as much, but maybe that was for the better as it made things easier, but it resulted in very low lecture turnout and engagement with little incentive to pay attention to the topics that weren't applied in assignments. Prof Angela is VERY nice but there is a little bit of language barrier as she does not seem to be a native English speaker, so her lectures may be mostly her reading off slides. That's ok because the slides are probably enough, but still, I feel bad for not paying attention because she tries really hard :(. My tutor Wei Yang is also really nice and he goes above and beyond for us, making sure we understand the assignments because... well, again it can be a little unclear what they're expecting. They released the statistics for the grades and the bell curve is very steep, with the median being close to full marks for the assignments. I did slightly median-below median for the assignments, but please feel free to contact if you would like to refer to my assignments.

Expected/Actual Grade: 

• M: A/A+
• ZH: A-/A-