Communication Skill-set Analysis

As a Communication social scientist, you should see things that other people don’t see. Your assignment is to take your Comm skillset and apply it to a real courtroom setting. Normally, you would attend a court case and observe the court setting in-person. Because of COVID, you’ll have to make your observations using streaming. Santa Barbara County courts do not currently have streaming, so find a California court that streams (e.g. https://saccourt.ca.gov/ criminal/hearing-livestreams.aspx) and then watch a court case component (hearing, civil trial, criminal trial etc.) online. There are several options for the Sacramento County Court example, so look around the site a bit (e.g. do calendar searches) before settling in to watch. Several California court streaming links are on our Gauchospace page. Use your knowledge of Communication to assess the patterns that you see, and then think through the likely implications of your observations. For example, does holding a hearing using streaming produce different outcomes than in-person (i.e. what is the impact of CMC vs F2F?); or how do the non-verbal behaviors of actors affect the way that people perceive statements? You may select any characteristics you wish, but the key is to use your knowledge of Comm, and what you learn in this course, to identify the impact of Communication on court cases. The paper should be 8-10 pages long, in APA format.