31664 - Media, Conflicts and International Politics

Learning outcomes

The course considers media systems as environments of interaction and conflict between the different actors of the globalized public space and of international politics.

At the end of the course the student:

- Analyses the communication strategies adopted by States, ONGs, social movements and terrorist groups to communicate their stances within the international public sphere;

- Explains the practices of definition of power relations within the international space considering the main theories linked to information ecosystems and their evolutions

- Classifies, on the basis of reasonings based on the literature and on the knowledge of case studies, the different media actors that participate in the construction of the representations of international politics and of “global issues”

- Combines the different interpretative approaches to the nature and structure of digital environments and of social networking platforms, in order to understand the opportunities and limits that such environments offer for traditional and new actors of international politics.

Course contents

The course’s object will be the links between communication, conflicts and international politics, analysing both the media’s representations of wars and international politics, and the media’s influence on such phenomena. The theme will be framed historically and from the point of view of media theory and the impact of new media on the communication of conflicts and international politics will be examined through the study of specific recent cases.

An introductory part of the course will present some fundamental notions of the sociology of media (newsworthiness, framing, agenda setting, technological determinism…) and analyse the relations between sociology of media and theories of international politics.

A second part of the course will contextualize historically the relation between media and wars, starting from WWI (with some references to earlier conflicts) and up to the wars of the beginning of the 21^st Century.

The third and main part of the course will deal with some recent cases (Second Gulf War, Arab Springs, Wikileaks, the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the migrations of refugees in the Mediterranean…) in order to examine the changes in communication practices linked to these events, and the role that the media themselves have had in the events.

The course aims to present the media as socially situated. On the one hand it will be shown how media have an influence on international politics and how technological and social innovations in the field of media have an impact. On the other hand the course aims to scale down some of the most radical theories on the impact of new technologies, highlighting historical continuities in the workings of the media, and underlining how new technological configuration can reproduce pre-existing social situations.

Readings/Bibliography

1) De Angelis, Enrico (2007) Guerra e mass media. Roma, Carocci

2) The following articles, all of which are available through the Unibo proxy ( http://www.sba.unibo.it/it/almare/servizi-e-strumenti-almare/connessione-da-remoto ):

Galtung, Johan & Ruge, Mari Holmbloe (1965) The Structure of Foreign News. The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers. Journal of Peace Research, 2(1): 64-90. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336500200104

Harcup, Tony & O’Neill, Deidre (2016) What is news? News values revisited (again). Journalism Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193

Lindner, Andrew M. (2009) Among the Troops: Seeing the Iraq War Through Three Journalistic Vantage Points. Social Problems, 56(1): 21-48 https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2009.56.1.21

Wolfsfeld, Gadi, Segev, Elad & Sheafer, Tamir (2013) Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18(2): 115-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161212471716

Hindman, Elizabeth Blanks & Thomas, Ryan J (2014) When old and new media collide: The case of WikiLeaks. New Media & Society, 16(4): 541-558. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813489504

Leander, Anna (2016) Digital/commercial (in)visibility: The politics of DAESH recruitment videos. European Journal of Social Theory https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431016668365

Musarò, Pierluigi (2017) Mare Nostrum: the visual politics of a military-humanitarian operation in the Mediterranean Sea. Media, Culture & Society, 39(1): 13-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716672296

Smets, Kevin (2016) Ethnic media, conflict, and the nation-state: Kurdish broadcasting in Turkey and Europe and mediated nationhood. Media, Culture & Society, 38(5): 738-754. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443715620928

Yeo, ShinJoung (2016) Geopolitics of search: Google versus China? Media, Culture & Society, 38(4): 591-605. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716643014

 

3) One volume to be choosen among the following (most of the volumes are available in Unibo libraries)

Bakir, Vian (2010) Sousveillance, media and strategic political communication: Iraq, USA, UK, New York, Continuum

Grandi, Roberto & De Maria, Cristina (eds) (2008) Marketing e rappresentazione dei conflitti: media, opinione pubblica, costruzione del consenso, Bologna, Bononia University Press.

Hoskins, Andrew & O’Loughlin, Ben (2010) War and media: the emergence of diffused war, Cambridge, Polity.

Valeriani, Augusto (2011) Twitter factor: come i nuovi media cambiano la politica internazionale, Roma-Bari, Laterza.

Hammond, Philip (2008) Media e guerra: visioni postmoderne, Bologna, Odoya.

Lalli, Pina (ed) (2003) Guerra e media. Kosovo: il destino dell'informazione. Verona, Ombre Corte.

Cuttitta, Paolo (2012) Lo spettacolo del confine: Lampedusa tra produzione e messa in scena della frontiera, Milano, Mimesis.

Brevini, Benedetta, Hinz, Arne & McCurdy, Patrick (eds) (2013) Beyond WikiLeaks: Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society, London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Douai, Aziz & Ben Moussa, Mohamed (eds) (2016) Mediated Identities and New Journalism in the Arab World: Mapping the "Arab Spring", London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Teaching methods

Lectures

Assessment methods

Final written exam. For those attending the lessons the will be the option, at the first session, to present an essay, arranged with the teacher, and to have a reduced programme for the written exam. In this case the essay and the written exam will contribute to the final grade.

Teaching tools

Powerpoint presentations

Office hours

See the website of Djordje Sredanovic