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Guo, Lei<\/a>, an associate professor of emerging media studies (EMS), wanted to see if Brigham and Women\u2019s might have a specific question about their strategy that a group of students could study in EM 777, a three-semester graduate research seminar. The course, a prerequisite for master\u2019s and PhD students in the EMS program, matches student teams with real-world clients who need help with a communication-related challenge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For Bronda, being the liaison for the student researchers brought her full circle. She took EM 777 in 2015\u20132016; now, she had the chance to work with a new group of students. \u201cThis class really gives you the perspective of what work is, setting expectations and meeting deadlines,\u201d Bronda says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When James Katz<\/a> joined COM\u2019s faculty in 2014 and began designing the new graduate EMS program, he wanted to try something new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOften, in a research methods course, the professor will give students a dataset that\u2019s already been well explored\u2014I wanted our students to create knowledge, where the answers to the questions are unknown,\u201d says Katz, the Feld Professor of Emerging Media. \u201cThis gives them an opportunity to integrate sophisticated material, that\u2019s typically taught as abstract principles, with real-world problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That idea became EM 777, the capstone for EMS students. The 10-month course spans the entire master\u2019s program; PhD candidates serve as project leads and mentors. After a first semester devoted to learning methods of research in communication and academic theory, students split into teams and spend the spring working on client projects and writing academic papers. During a six-week summer semester, that work is then translated into a client report and presented at COM\u2019s Screentime conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lei, who teaches the course along with colleagues Kelsey Prena<\/a> and Chris Chao Su<\/a>, compares EM 777 to the sort of hands-on experiences offered in business schools. One team from the 2020\u20132021 cohort helped the city of Melrose, Mass., adopt new internal communication tools to manage its remote workforce during the pandemic. Another worked with BU\u2019s Fitness & Recreation Center<\/a> to understand what types of online fitness content would be the most effective during the pandemic. Other clients included Harvard Graduate School of Education, a Shanghai-based tourism marketing company, Twitter\u2019s Revenue Diversity & Emerging Businesses division and the International Monetary Fund\u2019s fiscal affairs department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To help their clients, the teams use some of the tools introduced in the first semester, which can include data analysis software like R, the programming language Python and survey software such as Qualtrics. They also use manual content analysis methodologies for media coverage, collecting and coding\u2014in one example\u2014news stories about how Brigham and Women\u2019s, and other leading hospitals, handled COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor research programs like ours, we are very unique,\u201d Lei says. \u201cWe prepare students to do research, but in a practical way.\u201d Alums of the program have stayed in academia while others have gone on to roles as social media analysts, UX (user interface) researchers and designers, and more traditional communication jobs, like Bronda\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Bronda began EM 777, she expected to continue on to the PhD program. But her project\u2014a collaboration with doctors at Boston Medical Center investigating the stigma attached to irritable bowel syndrome among college students\u2014steered her in another direction. \u201cIt\u2019s really where my love for health communication was born,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s where I created my area of expertise.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n For research programs like ours, we are very unique. We prepare students to do research, but in a practical way.<\/p>Guo, Lei<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n For PhD candidate Chawannuch Chaikulngamdee, who mentored the Brigham and Women\u2019s team, the project was also a chance to learn about the healthcare industry. Chaikulngamdee (\u201924) has managed social media accounts for businesses and was curious to see if the same strategies that increase sales could translate to health communication in the pandemic. \u201cFraming a message positively can convince consumers to buy a new product,\u201d she says. \u201cWould the same frame be as effective to persuade people to get vaccinated?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Message framing became the basis of the team\u2019s research as they analyzed both social media and traditional news coverage, examining how hospitals and media organizations presented information. Did stories emphasize fear to motivate actions like mask wearing? Might a hopeful story spark audience engagement? <\/p>\n\n\n\n What they found reinforced the strategy that Bronda and her colleagues had used, while highlighting areas for improvement. Brigham and Women\u2019s was already putting out engaging stories and posts framed by hope and calls to action and often relied on their expert clinicians to convey information. But a frame they only used a fraction of the time was human interest, due to the challenges of the pandemic, which included remote work and restricted hospital access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut the research shows the importance of telling the story through the lenses of the patients and that\u2019s important for us to know from a strategic perspective,\u201d Bronda says. \u201cIt\u2019s not always easy\u2014but it\u2019s going to pay off because it\u2019s such an important part of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the onset of COVID-19 came a flood of public health advice, explainers about the virus\u2019 origins and spread and,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":31286,"template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"categories":[28,177],"tags":[1486],"bu-publication":[],"discipline-type":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/31181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/31181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31285,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/31181\/revisions\/31285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31181"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=31181"},{"taxonomy":"discipline-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/discipline-type?post=31181"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=31181"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=31181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Creating Knowledge<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Picking a Path<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n