Main themes

The aim of this seminar is that students should compare various key approaches to the study of communications systems by linking them. By the end of the seminar, students will have to be able to locate these approaches by differentiating between them, and particularly by identifying their convergences on the basis of the following questions:
- Which issue underpins each approach?
- Which study topics do they offer?
- In what ways is their theoretical growth developed?
- What methods of observation and analysis do they put in place?
- What fundamental concepts do they construct?
- What interactions do they have with communication practices?

Content and teaching methods

Every year, the seminar examines key approaches that address communications systems.
The approaches are selected by the inter-disciplinary team of teachers who jointly run the seminar. They merge semiotic, systemic and narratological perspectives together with psychological, anthropological, sociological and other approaches.
After the selected approaches have been presented one after the other, they will be subjected to comparative linkage.
Students will be invited to produce an analysis of the relationships between approaches presented on the seminar depending on the issue that is defined, and under the direction of the staff jointly running the seminar. The issues may refer to the issue, the focus of study, the way in which the theoretical elaboration is constructed, the methodology, the concepts, and the scope and evolution of the theoretical approaches.
The course will include a brief review of the theoretical approaches, a course of back-up reading, a presentation of research work exemplifying an approach, and a comparison of a range of approaches.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Assessment will use work presented by students as the basis for focusing on their ability critically to locate the characteristics of the theoretical approaches studied during the seminar.

Other credits in programs