Yukun's thought about this class

Instead of micro-level problems, I am more interested in macro-level problems such as globalization and political economy. Second half part of my textbook indeed catches my eyes. This is my first time to study in US, so I am not so quantitative. In fact, now I am still trying to fit myself into quantitative thinking. For me, qualitative and quantitative approaches are different logics. Depending on the research questions you are interested in, you choose the suitable approachse to solve the problem. For example, voting behavior is a suitable research field for quantitative approaches. But we can’t presume something which can’t be quantitative doesn’t exist in this world. Sometimes I read the articles published in America’s Journal. I have some feelings that scholars spend too much time in procedure and forget research value and goal.

For example, in “Passing It On: The Reinforcement of Male Hegemony in Sports Journalism Textbook.” I believe the methodology authors used is really excellent. But in the article I want to figure out different feminist’s assumptions on the difference between male and female. If authors didn’t deal this question and did quantitative research to count the number of male athletes and female athletes, I don’t think this article is good enough. In addition, how to differential an old experienced male sport report and a young blonde female journalist in this industry can’t be seen in this article. In quantitative perspective, both are equal. But, for me, they are very different and there are many implications behind this situation.

And then I just wonder why public schools in US are so quantitative. What I said is not just in the field of mass communication or journalism, and it also happens in the fields of Political Science and Economy. Compared to other countries such as Canada, UK And German, it is very unique.

In this class, the most problem for me is language barrier. Especially, without common language platform, it is hard for me to discuss issues furthermore. If it is possible, I will suggest to discus some key terms and make sure everyone has common definitions before article discussions.