Learning outcomes
The main aim of this course is to reassess the complex and controversial interaction between world politics and the media by focusing on the political/strategic dimension of international crises and military conflicts, their media perceptions and policies of 'mediatisation'. The latter is a dynamic process shaping/manipulating the understanding of events via media representation.This process can have a relevant impact on the political mechanism of decision-making. Learning how international politics and mediatization impact on each other is a relevant goal for students aiming at professional positions in the world of international media, international organisations or the private sector of communication dealing with crisis management.
Course contents
This course is organised in three sections:
1) Cold war crises (Korea, Cuba, Vietnam) and their increasingly significant media narratives.
2) The second phase from the 1970s to the end of the cold war, when national and international terrorism take centre stage within the narrative of international crisis as shown by 9/11 and the unprecedented decision of waging 'war on terror'.
3) Global crises (such as the decline of internationalism and of the European project, financial and humanitarian crises, new movements of public national and transnational dissent) will be studied by focusing on test cases that provide significant insights in the creation of dominant narratives by the media.
Teaching methods
This course consist of weekly lectures and seminars both requiring students' attendance. As regards to seminars, students will be working in groups to discuss questions and sources previously planned with teaching staff. The final product will be an oral presentation based on a written/power point presentation.
Reccomended or required readings
Reading list and web sources:
S COTTLE, Mediatized Conflicts, 2006
E. S. HERMAN and N CHOMSKY, Manufacturing Consent: The political Economy of the Mass Media, 2008
E. M. FUGL, H. Stig, M. METTE (eds), The Dinamics of mediatized conflicts, 2015
P ROBINSON, Theorizing the Influence of Media on World Politics. Models of Media Influence on Foreign Policy, European Journal of Communication December 2001 vol. 16 no. 4, pp 523-544
M. MANDELBAUM, Vietnam: the television war, 1982
D.C. HALLIN, The Media, the War and Political support: a critique of the thesis of an opposition media, 1984
D. HAYES, M. GUARDINO, Whose views made the news? Media coverage and the march to war in Iraq, 2010
P.N. HOWARD, A. DUFFY and others, Opening Closed Regimes. What was the role of social media during the Arab spring?, 2011
J LLOYD/C MARCONI, REPORTING THE EU
NEWS, MEDIA AND THE EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS, London 2014
P ROBINSON, The CNN effect: can the news media drive foreign policy? Review of international studies, Volume 25 / Issue 02 / April 1999, pp 301-309
Cold War,
edited by Melvyn P. Leffler, Odd Arne Westad, vol 3, 2010, chapter 23, pp. 489-512
The Policy-Media Interaction Model: Measuring Media Power during Humanitarian Crisis, Journal of Peace Research September 2000 37: 613-633,
WEB SOURCES at:
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
Reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
The National Security Archive www.nsarchive.org