The ECREA Summer School offers different workshops that focus on both general competencies and topic-specific challenges. The topic-specific workshops are structured as electives, meaning you get to choose which to take based on your interest. Below are description of the elective workshops offered in 2024.
| Qualitative approaches to digital activism WEDNESDAY 7/8 13.30-16.00 | What are the recurrent problems qualitative researchers must prepare for? With this question in mind, this workshop will explore the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative approaches to studying activist communication and action on social media platforms. We will start with the question of what meaning making and use practices can bring to this topic. Using a guided-discussion format, we’ll map participants’ own research interests and uncertainties. We will then explore these research interests and uncertainties in relation to the ‘classical’ data collection and analysis. We will discuss the collection of primary (interviews, ethnography) and secondary (existing online and offline traces) data; as well as different analysis methods such as case studies, thematic analysis, and (multimodal) discourse analysis. Lecturer: Delia Dumitrica |
| Computational approaches to the analysis of media texts WEDNESDAY 7/8 13.30-16.00 | This workshop will provide an overview of different approaches to computationally analysing media texts using the R programming language. Students will first be introduced to key concepts such as API, bag-of-words, tokenisation, supervised and unsupervised machine learning. The workshop will then move to applying a common workflow (data gathering >> data management >> data cleaning >> data analysis >> data visualisation) to analyse text data extracted from social media (in this case, YouTube video comments) using an existing dictionary/lexicon. To apply this workflow, this workshop will use the quanteda R package, which is the one of the most popular tools to analyse text data in the social sciences. Previous knowledge of R or quanteda is not necessary for this workshop. Lecturer: Dani Madrid-Morales |
| Mind scripting WEDNESDAY 7/8 13.30-16.00 | During this workshop participants will work with mind scripting as a method to explore underlying expectations, dominant imaginaries and doxa of sociotechnical systems. Using the example of the digital welfare state from a citizen perspective, we will work hands on with mind scripting. Participants’ experiences with digital welfare tools result in short reflections that will be collectively deconstructed. Through this creative engagement we explore taken for granted ideas about digital welfare provision. In this way, our experimental session connects participants’ socio-technical ideas of digital welfare with hands on testing mind scripting as a creative and participatory methods. Lecturer: Anne Kaun |
| Online semi-structured interviews SATURDAY 10/8 14.00-16.30 | As research moves into digital spaces, capturing the action and engaging the participants becomes more challenging. This methodological workshop focuses on strategies to apply online semi-structured interviews, aiming to capture audiences in-depth and their multiplicities. Talking about media consumption is a complex process and often unconscious. As a consequence, a framework of codes, signs, and language that goes far beyond words is a central dimension of the interview that can be richer in more relaxed spaces. Based on the experience developed as part of the YouNDigital project, I will present the strategies used to create a relaxed and dynamic environment with a participatory approach (bottom-up). The tutor will present the methodological framework, main objectives, multimedia exercises included in the script, and the practical challenges of conducting online interviews. Lecturer: Mariana Scalabrin Müller |
| Multimodal critical discourse analysis SATURDAY 10/8 14.00-16.30 | In this workshop, we discuss multimodal critical discourse analysis, both from theoretical and more applied perspectives. Specifically, we first introduce and discuss discourse analysis, related key concepts (e.g., discourse, hegemony, power) and different approaches. Then, we will delve deeper into critical discourse analysis and multimodal critical discourse analysis in particular as a research design, involving different steps and tools. We then explain these theoretical insights through several case studies. Finally, the doctoral students apply these insights to a specific empirical case. Lecturer: David Ongenaert |
| Activist research: normativity in media and communication research SATURDAY 10/8 14.00-16.30 | The starting point for the workshop is that while society is politicised, we are witnessing a depoliticization of academia. A politicised society requires research that addresses questions about democracy, also from normative perspectives. Media and communication are key to democracy. This workshop discusses how we as researchers can address normative questions about the role of media and communication to democracy and prosper. The latter is no less relevant for junior scholars such as PhD students, because they are in precarious positions. The workshop looks at both possibilities and challenges, e.g., in relation to impact, repercussions, and citations. It will include student centred elements, inviting participants to identify possibilities and challenges in their own research, and I will provide examples from my own research on activism and multinational companies. Lecturer: Julie Uldam |
Information about how and when to pick your preferred electives, will be shared via email and the ECREA Summer School Teams platform.