Christine Farina,
x6836,
office K128
cfarinac@gmail.com,
text: 609.626.1411
Assignments
Turn anything in anytime you want to by the due date.
In-Class Assignments
10 = 50% grade
Visual and Audio Manipulation
15%
Due February 27 or March 27 your choice
Share in class, turn it in (the typed part)
Find a news story, show it in class. Debunk the visual and audio components which comprise the unspoken story and/or bias,
Final Paper
20%
Due on or before April 17
Write a paper either defending or countering the claim that the media influences society. 5-12 pp
Narrow your argument to one case or use several compatible examples.
Subtle Influence
Compare a current story as purveyed on four or more news outlets (e.g. CNN, FOX, NPR Colbert Report)
15%
Due before or by March 13 or April 24 your choice
***
News is an ecosystem which acts as a witness, a verifier, a contextualizer, and an amplifier. A revolution in tools and techniques are changing how amateurs and professionals report and share news. Professional reporters work alongside amateur bloggers and social media users.
Which media venues have the most credibility and viewership?
Among which audiences?
News can be reported, confirmed, contradicted and contextualized in any number of different media. How do stories move from new media to broadcast media, or vice versa?
How powerful is New Media and what is its potential? Where will newsprint be in five years? US newspapers have shed jobs and closed foreign bureaus. Existing business models have failed, and new business models are still emerging.
In this class we will consider the news as an engineering challenge. How do we discover what events are taking place in different parts of the world? How do we explain the importance of these events to readers or viewers?
What stories are ignored and why? What biases are being employed as propaganda, and by whose authority?
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
We are going to study :
the culture of news
the psychology of darkness
the crowd,
the biology of belonging
the madness of the mob
political games
news euphemisms
framing/visual manipulation
copy/audio manipulation
the AP
betrayal
editing manipulation
time
24/7
news ethics
war news from the field
criteria
bias(?)
power of press
privileges of press
media conglomerates
the five most influential people in the world
fox, npr, bbc
world perspective
value of news
newsprint,
video,
other delivery systems
difference in hearing,
seeing news
unplanned news venues,
john stewart, et al
the Self of the News
the Newscaster's persona,
personality
assange
presumed authority
cases of undercover reporting
writing copy
orwell, newsspeak
animal farm
Chomsky
Murray
Coptic Christians
The onion
The Christie Story
News copy
Fall of the Faculty
The Kardashians
Stockton and the AC Press
Entertainment News
The ARGO
Fact checker
The Top Five
Visual composition and manipulation
Edward Snowden
anticipate a story that will catch
compare subjects chosen and not chosen to broadcast
compare different takes on one story
trace a story's life
criticize a bias
who is the storyteller
what's wrong with the government media complex?
Julian Assange
Accountability journalism
What’s the role of the news in exposing wrongdoing?
• In enabling civic participation?
• In creating public unrest?
• In supporting political causes and characters.
• In creating stories or continuing their life-stay
• Facts and fact-checking, truth and truthiness
One of the major functions of news media is verification – examining claims made by corporations, organizations and government officials to check their veracity.
• This function is complicated by the emergence of PR practices designed to disguise corporate speech, and a tendency of political rhetoric to stray beyond truth
• … and further complicated by human tendencies to remember untrue information when it confirms our biases.
• News and data visualization
One of the promises of the era of big data is the possibility of breaking important stories through the careful analysis of data.
• While there’s good evidence that untold stories lurk within data sets, telling a story with data is far more complicated than just analyzing and visualizing
• – it requires context and human stories as well.
