International Journalism

After completing this course students are able to:

• Apply analytical media studies tools, including framing, agenda-setting, gatekeepership & status conferral, in reading print & electronic media texts. (1,2,7)
• Analyse the social & political role of media across various countries & evaluate how texts are recast as they cross cultural borders (for instance via the wire services) to achieve impact and intelligibility in the target culture. (1,2,7)
• Write, edit & select five genres of media texts in English to publication standards, perfecting already highly-advanced English writing, up to & beyond effective operational proficiency (CEFR C1) toward mastery (CEFR C2). (3,4,5,6,7)

Relationship between assessment and learning goals:

Learning aims with assessment numbers below in brackets:

1. Media article review 
2. Presentation & annotations 
3. Profile 
4. Arts review 
5. Feature 
6. Columns 
7. Final project 

This course examines the encoding and decoding of print and online media texts. It addresses descriptive, discursive and tendentious news, press practice and readership expectations. It uses various hermeneutics to understand these phenomena in terms of ideology and power. In practice-based research, students learn to write publishable English texts in the ostensibly balanced/objective genres of news reports, profiles and features, plus the overtly opinionated genres of leading articles/editorials, columns and reviews, as well as analytical genres common to the social sciences.

Participants are required to attend cultural events at their own expense, contact subjects and arrange interviews, buy occasional copies of international newspapers and follow the news daily.