Theoretical and empirical approaches taken recognize urban centers as multicultural environments. Research project required. Ages of communicators as variables affecting the process and outcome of interaction. Student projects include interviews with elderly subjects and case studies. The impact of culture, politics, media on organizational communicative structures and processes, communication consultation, institutional-community interface are among the topics covered.
Current research is examined.
Students conduct an organizational research project. Particular attention given to assumptions regarding intent, effects, meaning, understanding, and interpretation, and their implications for studying persuasion from modernist and post-modernist perspectives. Focus is on understanding the cultural and power contexts and differences among and between peoples and institutions that establish the boundaries in the exchange of meanings, values, and ideas. Emphasis is given to questions of cultural, economic and political sovereignity in the pursuit of national, regional, and personal identity and development. Critique of current research in light of such considerations as cultural constraints, shifts in relational definitions and configurations and the like.