Scuola di Studi Superiori "Ferdinando Rossi" dell'Università degli Studi di Torino - SSST

Journalism and democracy in social media age (Visiting Prof. Nicholas Hubé) (II SEM)

Anno accademico 2020/2021

Sommario insegnamento

• Obiettivi formativi
• Modalità di verifica dell'apprendimento
• Programma
• Testi consigliati e bibliografia
• Note
• Strumenti didattici

Obiettivi formativi

The course will address the question of the role of journalism in contemporary democracies. This will include topics such as the professional evolution of journalism; trust in the media; the news media as an institution or as a political actor; the circulation of news in the digital environment; algorithms, filter bubbles, misinformation, and fake news.
Against a common sense background of “decline”, the purpose of this course is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will also analyze the “reaction” of journalism to these structural changes in political communication in this new media age. We will focus here mainly on advanced postindustrial democracies.

Modalità di verifica dell'apprendimento

Oral presentation and short essay on a topic of students' choice among those covered in the course

Programma

The course will include 3 modules on the following topics:

1. Structural changes in journalism and political communication
2. News or fake news. The challenge of credible sources for journalists.
3. Social media debates and Media credibility. 

Module 1 - Structural changes in journalism and political communication

This module will be focused on the systemic and structural changes in the media environments and political communication systems during the last decennia. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Different concerns are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: declining supply of political information, declining quality of news, increasing media concentration and declining diversity of news, increasing fragmentation and polarization, increasing relativism; increasing inequality in political knowledge, etc. All these concerns have to be thought together.

Module 2 - News or fake news. The challenge of credible sources for journalists

In today's political game, journalists have to deal with a plurality of sources, all of which have access to public debate. NGOs as well as activists, politicians as well as companies know how to put issues on the agenda, and how to disseminate truths and half-truths. We will see in this module how public debate is organized, and how the different arenas of public debate are articulated between filter bubbles on social networks and street demonstrations, between live-tweeting and televised statements. We will especially focus on the source’s strategies and on their counter-part (journalistic reactions) to set the agenda.

Module 3 - Social media debates and Media credibility.

Since decades media have given a special place to the voice of “ordinary people”. But the digital devices have changed the access and the way of talking together. Boundaries between "profane speech" and "expert speech", between citizens and journalists or politicians are blured. In this module we will try to answer this question: what are the uses made by the media organizations from this truth “from below”? And what kind of opinions are finally expressed by these authors? These changes in the organization of the public debate implemented also new legal constraints to the media organization towards the hate-speeches regulation and the necessity to develop new fact-checking activities.

Anderson C.W., Downie L., Schudson M. (2016), The News Media. What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Blumler J. (2016). The Fourth Age of Communication of Political Communication. Politiques de communication, 6.

Christin C. (2018). Counting Clicks: Quantification and Variation in Web Journalism in the United States and France. American Journal of Sociology, 123 (5).

Hallin D., & Mancini P. (eds) (2012), Comparing media system beyond the Western World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hallin D. & Mancini P. (2004), Comparing Media System. Three Models of Media and Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hanitzsch T., Hanusch F., Ramaprasad J., & de Beer A., eds. (2019). Worlds of Journalism: Journalistic Cultures Around the Globe. New York: Columbia University Press.

Van Aelst P. et al. (2017). Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?. Annals of the International Communication Association, 41 (1).

de Vreese C., Esser F., Hopmann D., Ed. (2017). Comparing political journalism, London: Routledge.

Note

L'orario delle lezioni sarà il seguente:

lunedì 19 aprile 2021                

martedì 20 aprile 2021       

mercoledì 21 aprile 2021

lunedì 26 aprile 2021               

martedì 27 aprile 2021       

mercoledì 28 aprile 2021    

lunedì 3 maggio 2021                  

martedì 4 maggio 2021       

mercoledì 5 maggio 2021

Dalle ore 17 alle ore 19

• Materiale didattico
• Bacheca appelli
• Vai a Moodle
• Visita i forum