POLITICS 233
Journalism and the Public Sphere
Please note: this is archived course information from 2012 for POLITICS 233.
Description
Some critics have voiced concerns about the future of journalism, and about the apparent lack of a unified public space where citizens can converse seriously about matters of collective concern. An "information explosion" has been accompanied by news "fragmentation" and demands for journalism to meet widely divergent objectives. Long regarded as the bedrock supplier of political information, the newspaper industry has been damaged by the flight of advertising and readers to the internet. The expansion of choice created by "post-broadcast" media technologies has unleashed a wholesale "flight to entertainment" with serious democratic consequences. Under such relentlessly hostile conditions, what is the future for public debate? Is the public sphere disintegrating? What democratic role, if any, might there be left for professional journalism to play? The course surveys the history of tabloid news and reviews modernist and post-modernist responses to contemporary mediated cultures.
Availability 2012
Semester 1
Lecturer(s)
Coordinator(s) Dr Joe Atkinson
Lecturer(s) Dr Gavin Ellis
Reading/Texts
Luke Goode, Jurgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere, London, Pluto Press, 2005.
Recommended Reading
Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007
Assessment
Coursework + exam
Points
POLITICS 233: 15 points
Prerequisites
Any 30 points at Stage I in Political Studies; or FTVMS 100 and 101
Restrictions