CEU Summer University - Media, Democratization and International Development: Foundations for a More Robust Research Agenda

Academic Program: CEU Summer University 2009

Monroe Price
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, US / Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) at SPP of CEU, Budapest, Hungary

This intensive summer school on media development is designed to help early-stage researchers gain an understanding of the history, theory, practice, and current trends in the media development sector. In the program, students will be exposed to a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and applied/practitioner perspectives from academics and professionals in the media development arena. As part of the course, participants will help develop a comparative research project, undertake field research, and assess and evaluate findings in a written report, fully supervised by a mentor.

The goals of the course are:

1. To stimulate and advance research, scholarship and academic discourse on media development;
2. To identify a select group of scholars working in this area and nurture their research interests and capabilities;
3. To give participants the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in research related to media development of benefit to the academic and practitioner communities.

As a result of the course, we plan to develop an edited reader on media development, which will feature contributions from the summer course faculty as well as other leading thinkers in the field. SUN participants will have the opportunity to contribute individual field research case studies and comparative analysis developed during the program.

The course will be run as a "master class". Through lectures and discussion, students will have access to varied perspectives that speak to historical and current trends of theory, research and practice and provide a foundational understanding of the dynamics of the media development field. To maximize the opportunities for interaction with instructors and mentors, the course will be small in size, with a maximum of 20 students.

The course is being developed in collaboration with The James M. Cox Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research and the Novi Sad School of Journalism, Novi Sad, Serbia. Student scholarships provided by a grant from the Open Society Institute (OSI) Network Media Program.