Focus
In the United States, many university journalism departments — particularly at Midwestern, Western and Southern state universities — evolved into schools or colleges of mass communication or "journalism and mass communication." In addition to studying practical skills of journalism, public relations or advertising, students also may major in "mass communication" or "mass communication research." The latter is often the title given to doctoral degrees from such schools, whether the focus of the student's research is journalism practice, media economics, history, law or media influence.
Departmental structures within such colleges may separate research and instruction in professional or technical aspects of newspaper and magazine publishing, radio, television, and film. Mass communication research topics include media institutions and processes, such as diffusion of information, and media effects, such as persuasion or manipulation of public opinion. Outside of media history and communication law, research methods in mass communication fields have leaned toward empirical research, experimental studies and quantitative methods, such as public opinion polling and content analysis of news media. However, qualitative research, including ethnographic case studies, interviewing, and focus groups, has growing support in some specialties. Critical-cultural theory is less popular than in other "communication studies" programs.
Such programs are accredited by the ACEJMC Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.
The International Communication Association (ICA) and National Communication Association (formerly the Speech Communication Association) include divisions and publications that overlap with those of AEJMC, but AEJMC historically has stronger ties to the mass communication professions in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Association For Education In Journalism And Mass Communication
Famous quotes containing the word focus:
“It’s sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child’s nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)