SOCI 402
SOCIOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION & INFORMATION
Fall 2010
Soci 402 – Sociology of Communication and Information 2
SOCI 402 – SOCIOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION
Fall 2010
Lemi Baruh
Department of Media and Visual Arts
Office: Z08B
Phone: 1133
Email: lbaruh@ku.edu.tr
Course Webpage: http://lemibaruh.wordpress.com/courses/soci402/
Class Time: Monday & Wednesday 11:00-12:15
Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 13:30 – 15:00 or by appointment
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The Sociology of Communication and Information course aims to introduce students to the central
issues regarding the multi-dimensional (and multi-directional) relationship between communication,
information, media and society. The course is intended to provide students with a basis for further
study and research related to the examination of the sociology of the communicator, audience,
content, effects, and communication as a social process. Throughout the course, students will be
invited to critically analyze contemporary issues of representation, identity, institutional power, media
conglomeratization, and technology.
COURSE OBJECTIVES




Students will acquire an understanding of the evolution of media and communications research
and theory,
Students will learn about and compare theoretical approaches to the subject, analyzing and
judging about the basic theories and approaches to the contemporary communications,
Students will compare and analyze both functions and dysfunctions of communicative processes
and media in the contemporary social system,
Students will be able to apply their knowledge to the particular research topic.
COURSE READINGS
A reader that contains all the readings that will be assigned for the Soci.402 Sociology of
Communication and Information will be available from the copy center. Students are expected to have
read the material before class.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING
The final grade for the course will be calculated based on following distribution:
10% class participation
20% assignments (4 x 5%)
20% midterm exam
20% final exam
30% final paper (7.5% for initial proposal + 7.5% for presentation + 15% for final paper)
Participation: You are required to attend classes and actively participate in class discussion.
Assignments: During the semester you will complete 4 assignments. Detailed instructions for each
assignment will be given during the semester. All assignments are due at the beginning of the class at
the date specified in the syllabus.
Midterm and Final Exams: There will be one midterm and a final exam. The midterm will be in the
eighth week of classes and the final exam is going to be during the finals week after classes are over.
Both exams will be open-book, open-notes short essay exams. Make-up exams will be allowed only
when a student presents a valid medical report.
Soci 402 – Sociology of Communication and Information 3
Final Paper and Presentation: Students are expected to develop a question and complete a final
paper about a topic that is relevant to the issues covered throughout the course.
 Students will hand in a two-page proposal for the paper in the ninth week of the semester
 Students will make a five-minute presentation regarding the paper in the last week of classes.
 Following the feedback they receive during their presentation, students will revise their papers and
will deliver their paper electronically via www.turnitin.com by latest 5PM on 07/01/2011.
The suggested length for your final papers is 12-15 pages (double-spaced, excluding title page,
appendices and references, using 2.5 cm margins, Times New Roman Font size 12). For information
regarding the formatting of your text, in-text citations and reference list, please consult with the
American Psychological Association (APA) Formatting and Style Guide.
POLICIES REGARDING ASSIGNMENTS AND DEADLINES
Assignments and papers delivered the specified deadline will be considered late. Late assignments
and papers will be penalized 10% for each business day it is late.
REMINDERS ABOUT CLASSROOM DECORUM
Students are expected to be on time for class. Attendance will taken in the first 5 minutes of the class
and students who arrive later than 5 minutes after the scheduled time of class will be counted as
absent.
As a courtesy to your peers, once inside the class, please put your phone in vibrate mode and please
refrain from chatting with your peers and please do not leave the room until the end of the class.
ACADEMIC HONESTY
Cheating, plagiarism or collusion in assigments, exams or papers are serious offences that will result
in a failing grade and more severe disciplinary action. There are no exceptions to this rule. You may
also face additional, more severe disciplinary action.
Plagiarism is taking and using another person's thoughts, ideas, writings, images or music as your
own, without acknowledging or giving appropriate references as to the source of those ideas and
expressions. In the case of copyrighted work, plagiarism is illegal. If you are in doubt about the
definitions of plagiarism, consult your instructor and make sure that you are familiar with the Koç
University Academic Regulations and the Regulations for Student Disciplinary Matters, particularly
those related to academic honesty.
Turnitin.com: Students and the instructor will be using www.turnitin.com to learn about and check for
plagiarism in their assignments and papers. All students will need to register with www.turnitin.com
during the semester.
Soci 402 – Sociology of Communication and Information 4
TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE
WEEK 1
27/09/2010 - Course Introduction & Overview
29/09/2010 - The Early Beginnings of Communication Studies
 Charles Horton Cooley (2003/1909). Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind (Chapters,
6, 8 and 9). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
WEEK 2
04/10/2010 – Social Influence and Media Effects: Propaganda, Politics and Society
 Melvin L. DeFleur and Sandra Ball-Rokeach (1989). Theories of Mass Communication (pp.1607).
 Shearon A. Lowery and Melvin L. DeFleur (1995). The Invasion from Mars: Radio Panics
America. In Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effects (pp. 45-65).
 Assignment 1 Due Next Week: Representation of Female Gender in Advertisements
06/10/2010 – Social Influence and Media Effects: Functions of Media
 Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Paul K. Merton (1948). Mass Communication, Popular Taste and
Organized Social Action. In Lyman Bryson (ed.) The Communication of Ideas. New York:
Harper & Bros.
WEEK 3
11/10/2010 – Social Influence and Media Effects: Research on Violence, Sex and Media
 Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillmann (1996). Violence and Sex in the Media. In Michael B. Salwen
and Don W. Stacks (eds.), An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research
(pp. 195-210). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
 Assignment 1 Due Today: Representation of Female Gender in Advertisements
13/10/2010 – Social Influence and Media Effects: Research on Violence, Sex and Media
 George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, and Nancy Signorielli (1994). Growing up with
Television: The Cultivation Perspective. In Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillmann (eds.), Media
Effects: Advances in Theory and Research (pp. 17-42). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
WEEK 4
18/10/2010 – Culture Industries, Media Ownership and Commercialism
 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944/2002) The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception. In Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
 Graham Murdock (2000). Concentration and Ownership in the Era of Privatization. In Paul
Marris and Sue Thornham (eds.) Media Studies: A Reader (pp. 142-155). New York: New York
University Press (chapter originally published in 1990).
20/10/2010 – Culture Industries, Media Ownership and Commercialism
 Sut Jhally (1995). Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture. In Gail Dines and
Jean M. Humez (eds.) Gender, Race and Class in Media (pp. 77-87). London: Sage.
Soci 402 – Sociology of Communication and Information 5
WEEK 5
25/10/2010 – Journalism and Its Functions: A Brief History and Definitions
 Barbie Zelizer (2005). Definitions of Journalism. In Geneva Overholser and Kathleen Hall
Jamieson (eds.), The Press (pp. 66-80). New York: Oxford University Press.
 Timothy E Cook (2005). The Functions of the Press in a Democracy. In Geneva Overholser and
Kathleen Hall Jamieson (eds.), The Press (pp. 115-119). New York: Oxford University Press.
27/10/2010 – Journalism and Its Functions: Media Effects, Politics and News
 Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw Source (1972). The Agenda-Setting Function of
Mass Media. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2): 176-187.
 Entman, R.M. (1991). Framing U.S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of
the KAL and Iran air incidents. Journal of Communication 41: 6-27.
 Assignment 2 Due Next Week: Framing Analysis
WEEK 6
01/11/2010 – Journalism Conventions and News Content

Peter Golding and Phillip Elliott (2000). News Values and News Production. In Paul Marris and
Sue Thornham (eds.) Media Studies: A Reader (pp. 632-644). New York: New York University
Press (chapter originally published in 1979).
 Michael Schudson (2003). The Sociology of News (pp. 117-133; pp. 134-153). London: Norton
& Company.
03/11/2010 – Journalism Conventions and News Content
 Assignment 2 Due Today: Framing Analysis
WEEK 7
08/11/2010 – Media Audiences and Reception

Hall, Stuart ([1973] 1980): 'Encoding/decoding'. In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
(Ed.): Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 London:
Hutchinson, pp. 128-38.
 Janice A. Radway (1995). Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Content. In
Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez (eds.) Gender, Race and Class in Media (pp. 202-214). London:
Sage.
 Assignment 3 Due Next Week: Media Diary
10/11/2010 – Media Audiences and Reception
 Alan M. Rubin (1994). Media Uses and Effects: A Uses and Gratifications Perspective. In
Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillmann (eds.), Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research
(pp. 417-436). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.
WEEK 8
22/11/2010 – Midterm Examination (Open book and notes)
24/11/2010 – Media Audiences and Reception
 Assignment 3 Due Today: Media Diary
Soci 402 – Sociology of Communication and Information 6
WEEK 9
29/11/2010 – Communication, Information and Nation States
 Benedict Anderson (1983). Imagined Communities (pp. 37-46, pp. 163-186). London: Verso.
 Final Paper Proposals Due
01/12/2010 – Communication, Information and Nation States

Anthony Giddens (1991). The Consequences of Modernity (pp. 17-63). Cambridge: Polity.
WEEK 10
06/12/2010 – Information, the Network(ed) Society, and the Postmodern Condition


Manuel Castells (1999). An introduction to the information age. In Hugh Mackay and Tim
O’Sullivan (eds.) The Media Reader: Continuity and Transformation. London: Sage.
Marshall McLuhan (1994). “The Medium Is the Message” in Understanding Media: The
Extensions of Man. MIT Press (Reproduced in The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, eds. Kelly
Askew and Richard R. Wilk, pp.18-26).
08/12/2010 – Information, the Network(ed) Society, and the Postmodern Condition


Jean Baudrillard (1985). The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media. New Literary
History 16(3): 577-589.
Jean-François Lyotard (2003). Defining the Postmodern. In Simons During (ed.) The Cultural
Studies Reader (pp. 142-145). New York: Routledge.
WEEK 11
13/12/2010 – Participatory Democracy, Media: Public Sphere and Mass Media

Jurgen Habermas (1964). The Public Sphere. New German Critique, 3 (Autumn, 1974): pp.4955.
15/12/2010 – Participatory Democracy, Media: Public Sphere and Mass Media


James Curran (2005). What Democracy Requires of the Media. In Geneva Overholser and
Kathleen Hall Jamieson (eds.) The Press (pp. 120-140). New York: Oxford University Press.
Assignment 4 Due in Two Weeks: The Ideal Public Sphere
WEEK 12
20/12/2010 – Digital Media and Cybersociality

Sherry Turkle (2007). Authenticity in the age of digital companions. Interaction Studies, 8(3):
501-517.
22/12/2010 – Digital Media and Cybersociality


Hugo Liu (2007) Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances. Journal of Computer Mediated
Communications 13(1): 252-275.
Sarah Coleman and Nick Dyer-Witheford (2007) Playing on the digital commons: collectivities,
capital and contestation in videogame culture. Media Culture Society 29: 934-953.
Soci 402 – Sociology of Communication and Information 7
WEEK 13
27/12/2010 – Cyberpolitics and Society



Fraser, N. (2007). Transnationalizing the public sphere. Theory, Culture and Society, 24(4), 730.
Anduiza, Eva , Cantijoch, Marta and Gallego, Aina (2009). Political Participation and the
Internet. Information, Communication & Society, 12(6): 860-878.
Assignment 4 Due in Today: The Ideal Public Sphere
29/12/2010 – Cyberpolitics and Society
 Jan Van Dijk (2006). Digital Divide Research, Achievements and Shortcomings. Poetics 34:
221-235.
 Cass Sunstein (2007). Republic.com 2.0: Revenge of the Blogs (Chapter 3). Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
WEEK 14
03/01/2011 – Final Paper Presentations
05/01/2011 – Concluding Remarks