Enrollment year
2020/2021
Academic discipline
SPS/08 (SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION)
Department
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Course
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
Curriculum
PERCORSO COMUNE
Period
2nd semester (01/03/2021 - 28/05/2021)
Lesson hours
36 lesson hours
Activity type
WRITTEN AND ORAL TEST
Prerequisites
It is assumed that students have a broad understanding of social research methods.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course students will be able to:
• Understand the strategic importance of big data and digital methods for contemporary journalism;
• Identify the main opportunities and challenges posed by digital data and methods in the field of journalism;
• Design, plan and deliver a research project based on digital data and methods for journalistic purposes
Course contents
This Digital Journalism course is mainly a course on data journalism. Big data and digital methods are more and more incorporated into contemporary journalistic practices. Journalists and newspapers increasingly rely on digital data and methods to both compose their articles (e.g. tweets, Instagram posts, sentiment analysis, data visualisation) and cast a light on new social phenomena (e.g. fake news, bots, censorship, gig economy etc.). Therefore, this course aims at providing students with an essential conceptual and methodological toolkit to unlock the power of big data, that is, to collect, analyse and interpret digital data for data journalism purposes.
The course will cover, mainly, the following topics: data journalism, big data, algorithms, query design, data scraping and API calling, basic social network analysis, content analysis for digital media.
Teaching methods
The course will be delivered using a mix of frontal lessons, examples, e-learning activities, practical exercises, collective discussions and group works. The course will host presentations by experts in the field of digital journalism.
Reccomended or required readings
Bibliography for those attending lectures: readings and learning materials provided by the Teacher during the lectures.
Bibliography for those not attending lectures: to be agreed with the Teacher.
Assessment methods
Oral Examination
Further information
Attending students will develop a group work that they will discuss during the oral examination.
Non-Attending students will do an oral examination.
Sustainable development goals - Agenda 2030