Ibero-Amerika Studien: Masterstudiengang „Communication and Society in Ibero-America“Kursangebot Wintersemester 2024/2025
FUNDAMENTAL COMPETENCIES
Vorlesung: Latin American Politics
This lecture introduces students to the key theoretical concepts and the main empirical questions of Latin American politics. It provides students with a broad understanding of the political systems and the social and economic challenges in the macro-region of Ibero-America. Against the backdrop of the enormous political and social diversity in the region, this lecture explores the causes and functioning of different institutional structures and their impact on politics and society. The lecture is structured into four overarching topics. The first thematic block is devoted to the political and economic development of Latin America. The second thematic area covers issues of citizen representation and competition between political parties. The third overarching topic is the change in societal values and the causes and consequences of migration for the region. Finally, the fourth thematic block discusses the influence of political actors and institutions on the capacity of states in Latin America. The lecture enables students to develop their own research questions based on the acquired knowledge of the region. The discussion of different methodological approaches enables them to critically engage with the relevant empirical-analytical literature. Furthermore, students learn to classify individual scientific contributions in higher-level debates and to efficiently elaborate the central statements of scientific texts.
Dieser Kurs ist als Vorlesung für Modul 1 anrechenbar.
Seminar: Migratory Infrastructures: Policies, Networks and Humanitarianism
What is a migration corridor? What is transit migration and forced migration? What can we call a migration infrastructure? How do migration corridors operate? This course is aimed at students who are interested in exploring the issues of transit migration and forced migration. Starting from the analysis of the concept of infrastructure, we will analyze how migration policies, networks that facilitate/impede migration and humanitarianism converge in the flows of human mobility. Based on literature of case studies, we will scrutinize how materialities, human actors and migratory regimes converge in this type of mobility. Although most of the case studies that will be analyzed focus on migration corridors in the Americas, other corridors around the world may also be examine.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 1 oder 5b anrechenbar.
Vorlesung: The Making of Migration Crises in Ibero-America
This lecture has three main objectives:
1) To provide an initial approach to the topics of forced migration and migration corridors in the Americas, from a historical perspective. To this end, the lecture will analyze different examples of “migratory crises” that have taken place in the Americas since the beginning of the 20th century.
2) To reflect on how to approach the concept of “crisis” from media and political discourses’ perspectives. To this end, the lecture will present examples of discourses, news and narratives that (de)legitimize the concept of “migratory crises.”
3) The lecture seeks to bring students closer to Ibero-American geopolitics. To this end, examples of contemporary migratory flows that have marked the way of conceiving mobility in the Ibero-American region will be presented; from the massive flows of Chinese migration to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or the Spanish forced migration fleeing Franco's regime to the Americas, to the more contemporary flows of African or Asian migrations to South
Dieser Kurs ist als Vorlesung für Modul 2 anrechenbar.
Seminar: Resources, Space, and Power
In this seminar, we engage with theoretical approaches to space, resources and power (including its material and discursive dimensions). The seminar is structured along different concepts (extractivism, spatial fix, frontier, and others), commodities (e.g. silver, bananas), production systems (e.g. plantation, mine) and infrastructures. The regional focus of the course is Latin America.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 2 oder 5b anrechenbar.
Seminar: Comunicación y Sociedad en Iberoamérica
El seminario presenta los fundamentos de las prácticas y procesos comunicativos tomando como referencia la realidad social iberoamericana. La comunicación se descompone en sus diferentes factores, que se interpretan desde una perspectiva sociocognitiva, lingüística y comunicativa. Los contextos iberoamericanos sirven de marco para comprender cómo interviene cada factor de la comunicación y cómo contribuyen a su adecuación y eficacia en contextos sociales concretos. El conocimiento sobre cómo funciona cada factor y sobre cómo todos ellos interactúan entre sí contribuye a una mayor comprensión y a un mejor dominio de las técnicas comunicativas, especialmente en dominios públicos.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 3 anrechenbar.
Übung: Communication and Public Spheres in Ibero-America
This seminar studies the public sphere, comprised of the media, civil society, and politics, and looks at their relationships from a communication science perspective. The seminar, therefore, introduces a selective conceptual vocabulary that is regarded as instrumental to understanding the communicators of political information, such as journalists or today’s ‘users’. Further, the practical focuses on characteristics that typically guide the content of the media and political information and serve to uncover structures of the communication itself. Moreover, the effects of communication are discussed applying approaches from media effects research. The practical sets an emphasis on the context in which communication takes place in three dimensions: Firstly, it focuses on the Ibero-American context, and regional case studies inform about public sphere mechanisms around actors, media content, and reception in the macro-region. Secondly, the public spheres are studied under conditions of deeply changed media environments shaped by the production and use of digital media. Thirdly, the practical addresses current debates on societal processes, such as the polarization of the public sphere, that are suspected to be fueled by virulent online communication (e.g., hate speech). The seminar mainly builds on quantitative research literature, but previous knowledge of quantitative research is not required. A short introduction to reading quantitative papers is provided.
Dieser Kurs ist als Übung für Modul 3 anrechenbar.
Methodological Skills
Seminar: Qualitative methods
In this course, students will gain knowledge on approaches and methodologies in the social sciences and engage with qualitative research methods and techniques.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 4 anrechenbar.
HCIAS Master's Degree Lecture Series: Approaches, Methods, and Resources in Ibero-American Studies | HCIAS Wednesday Colloquium
Dieser Kurs ist als Vorlesung für Modul 4 anrechenbar.
Advanced Competencies
Seminar: Ámbitos de la comunicación pública en Iberoamérica
La comunicación pública es el conjunto de procesos de creación, circulación, recepción y retroacción de la información que configura los debates y temas públicos. Después de discutir los conceptos fundamentales de la comunicación pública, el curso se ocupa de sus distintos ámbitos de aplicación en Iberoamérica desde una perspectiva teórico-práctica e intercultural. Por un lado, se presentarán las herramientas teórico-metodológicas necesarias para entender la comunicación científica, la comunicación política, la comunicación intercultural y la comunicación publicitaria. Por otro, se discutirán los retos de estos cuatro ámbitos de la comunicación considerando su contribución a los debates públicos. Se hará especial hincapié en las estrategias para el análisis, la creación y la gestión de discursos y espacios de comunicación entre instituciones, organizaciones y ciudadanos.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 5 anrechenbar.
Seminar: Citizens and Digital Media
Today’s citizens and democracies experience multiple threats and challenges that can be linked to phenomena on digital and social media. On the one hand, hate speech, disinformation, and polarization harm how we talk to each other and find public consensus. On the other hand, an information overflow in online environments makes it difficult to gain the attention of citizens and mobilize them for political action. But at the same time, the expansion of the public sphere into the online environment has also widened the reach of the messages citizens send to others. This seminar introduces topics and approaches from communication science (and partly political science) that aim to foster our understanding of how citizens use digital media to shape today’s democracies. The topics and approaches consider how individual political participation has changed due to the application of digital media. Further, the seminar also emphasizes how citizens can effectively apply digital media for political action in text-writing practices. Finally, changing norms, attitudes, and values that present important boundary conditions for citizens’ engagement in democracies through digital media are also addressed.
The seminar mainly builds on quantitative research literature, but previous knowledge of quantitative research is not required. A short introduction to reading quantitative papers is provided.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 5 anrechenbar.
Seminar: Emancipatory Ruralities
This course explores the concept of rurality, examining its meaning, as well as challenges and potentials ascribed to it. The focus will moreover be on the analysis of social movements related to food and agriculture, as well as the phenomenon of rural populism.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 5b anrechenbar.
Key Transversal Skills
Seminar: Quantitative methods: Machine Learning for the Social Sciences
This course gently introduces students to machine learning models for social science research. It aims to equip them with the necessary tools to understand, evaluate, and build their own machine learning models. Starting from established and more familiar statistical methods (e.g., linear and non-linear regression models), students first learn about important differences and commonalities with machine learning models, and are introduced to fundamental concepts such as cross-validation, supervised versus unsupervised learning and model tuning. The following sessions then provide a comprehensive exploration of supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques, ranging from basic models to more advanced methods, with a focus on interpretability. These include, inter alia, k-nearest-neighbour classifier, Decision Trees/Random Forests, Support Vector Machines, dimension reduction techniques and clustering methods. Throughout the course, students are provided with exemplary code using the R statistical environment and hands-on exercises to apply their learned skills directly.
Dieser Kurs ist als Seminar für Modul 7 anrechenbar.
Übung: Practicing Quantitative Data Analysis with SPSS
Many of the questions we ask in social sciences require collecting and analyzing quantitative data. This practical introduces into basic data analysis with the statistical software package SPSS. After beginning with a brief methodological introduction (e.g., on formulating hypotheses) and basic statistics, the practical provides how-to-knowledge on creating SPSS codes, allowing modification and analysis of social science data sets. Analysis sessions, for example, include comparing means (t-tests) or testing relationships between two or more variables (correlation analysis, regression analysis). The course is structured as a “block seminar” that combines input and practice sessions and allows students to create and run their own SPSS codes in monitored self-practice sessions. Students of this practice can apply acquired basic SPSS skills in future empirical term papers or theses. Previous knowledge of quantitative data analysis is not required.
Dieser Kurs ist als Übung für Modul 7 anrechenbar.