29514 - Global History: Public Sphere and Mass Media (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students will be able to use the acquired conceptual and theoretical tools to build adequate analytical frames and approach specific historical subjects. Particularly, students will master theories and methodological approaches concerning the shape and changes of public spheres in contemporary history. Thanks to the knowledge of the national and international historiography, students will be able to manage on their own further historical research on a specific topic. At the end of the two modules of the course, they will be aware of the methodological orientations prevailing in the global history, particularly with regard to economic matters, material cultures, environmental changes and changes in the public sphere. This will allow them to be critical towards the information, the texts and data and their historiographic relevance.

Course contents

Building Communicative Relationships and Public Spheres: Transnational and Global Dimensions

This course (Module 2 of the integrated course on Global History) aims to introduce and analyze the formation of transnational and global public spheres by considering both the evolution of mass media and communication technologies and the actors — institutional and from the civil society — that utilized them. Particular attention will be paid to the use of mass media "from below" in constructing and disseminating critiques of the established order across various historical phases of the long twentieth century.

The course is structured into five thematic blocks to be covered over its five-week duration. While the first block will focus primarily on theories and analytical categories, the subsequent four blocks will center on specific communication media and the use social actors made of the to advocate social change.

Week 1: The first week of the course will necessarily be dedicated to defining the conceptual tools and the theoretical framework adopted: public sphere, mass communication, global history, and transnational history.

Week 2: The role of the PRESS in constructing public spheres between the 19th and 20th centuries. During a period marked by the rise of nation-states on the one hand and the intensification of global interdependencies on the other, the course will analyze both institutional and "grassroots" uses of the press. The classic notion of the bourgeois public sphere (Habermas) will be examined in relation to other forms of public sphere that emerged in parallel through critiques of the established order—in both the "metropolises" and the "peripheries" of empires. Attention will also be given to the press's role in shaping the cognitive frameworks and worldviews that fueled broad processes of social protest (such as the events of 1968).

Week 3: The impact of TV and CINEMA on public spheres during the Cold War decades. In the second half of the 20th century, the advent of television brought about profound changes in the nationalization of institutional public spheres. At the same time, cinema and other media outlets made it possible to challenge the narratives promoted by institutions through experimental, "militant" uses of film, THEATER, and RADIO; specific cases of this will be analyzed with the active participation of the entire class.

Week 4: The public sphere through supranational CONFERENCES (from Bandung, 1955, to the Tricontinental Conference, 1966). The use of global conferences as settings for establishing new public spaces became consolidated with the UN Conferences on Women (1975–1995); these events saw the emergence of the "forum" model as an expression of civil society and a "critical public sphere" (Habermas). The course will examine the specific communication methods of these forums, which—starting with the Mexico City Conference (1975)—helped shape distinct organizational practices within the development of "global feminism."

Week 5: The public sphere of the NGOs and the advent of the WWW. Since the 1990s, "new media" have enabled new forms of communication, organization, and action, opening up new horizons of expectation regarding the potential for protest movements to operate on a global scale. We will explore how the forum model—already established within institutional contexts (UN conferences on the environment [1992], human rights [1993], population [1994], and women [1995])—evolved into a vehicle for global protest in the form of the World Social Forums of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The final week will also be dedicated to an in-depth look at critical texts regarding the forms and limitations of the public sphere today, through shared discussion of the readings.

All materials, readings, and sources covered during the lectures will be made available on the Virtuale platform.

At the start of the course, presentations on supplementary texts will be organized; these may be conducted individually or in small groups, depending on the actual number of students attending. Active participation in lectures is required in all cases.

Readings/Bibliography

The books listed below are references for topics tackled in class. They can serve as starting readings for the preparation of the final paper.

On methodological, historiographical and conceptual issues:

Craig Calhoun (ed), Habermas and the public sphere, The Mit Press, Cambridge 1992;

Sebastian Conrad, Storia globale: un'introduzione, Roma: Carocci, 2015;

J. Habermas, Storia e critica dell'opinione pubblica, 3. ed
Roma-Bari, Laterza 2008;

Jürgen Habermas, Nuovo mutamento della sfera pubblica e politica deliberativa, Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 2023;

John Hall, Frank Trentmann, eds., Civil society: a reader in history, theory and global politics, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005;

Claire Mercer, ‘NGOs, civil society, and democratization: a critical review of the literature’, Progress in Development Studies, 2, 5, 2002, pp. 5–22.

Peppino Ortoleva, Il secolo dei media: stili, dinamiche, paradossi,
Milano: Il saggiatore, 2022;

Marek Tamm, Peter Burke (eds.), Debating new approaches to history, London, Bloomsbury 2019;

Marica Tolomelli, Sfera pubblica e comunicazioni di massa, Bologna, Archetipo 2006.

On the historical phases addressed in class:

The Function of Newspapers in Society: A Global Perspective, eds. Shannon E. Martin and David A. Copeland. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003

Alberto, Paulina L., George Reid Andrews, and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, eds. Voices of the Race: Black Newspapers in Latin America, 1870-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Arsan, Andrew, Su Lin Lewis, and Anne-Isabelle Richard, ‘Editorial – the roots of global civil society and the interwar moment’, Journal of Global History 7 (2012): 157-165.

Hunter E. ‘Our common humanity’: print, power, and the colonial press in interwar Tanganyika and French Cameroun. Journal of Global History. 2012;7(2):279-301;

Pio Baldelli, Informazione e controinformazione, 5. ed. riv. e aggiornata, Milano: G. Mazzotta, 1976

Bacon, Jacqueline. Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007.

Bergin, Cathy. "Race/class politics: the Liberator, 1929-1934." Race & Class 47, no. 4 (2006): 86-104.

Stefano Bellucci, Holger Weiss (eds.), Internationalisation of the labour question: ideological antagonism, workers' movements and the ILO since 1919, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020;

Stefano Cambi, Diplomazia di celluloide? : Hollywood dalla seconda guerra mondiale alla guerra fredda, Milano : Angeli, 2014

John D.H. Downing, Radical media. Rebellious communication and social movements; with Tamara Villarreal Ford, Genève Gil, and Laura Stein, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2001.

Eco Umberto, Sulla televisione: scritti 1956-2015, a cura di Gianfranco Marrone, Milano: La nave di Teseo, 2018

Eco Umberto, Apocalittici e integrati : comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa, Milano: La nave di Teseo, 2025.

Esser, Andrea. 2002. "The Transnationalization of European Television." Journal of European Area Studies 10 (1): 13–29.

Goffredo Fofi, Morando Morandini, Gianni Volpi, Storia del cinema, vol. 2: Dal neorealismo alla fine della guerra fredda, Milano: Garzanti, 1990;

Goffredo Fofi, Morando Morandini, Gianni Volpi, Storia del cinema, vol. 4: USA, URSS e Terzo mondo: dagli anni Sessanta ai nostri giorni, Milano: Garzanti, 1990;

Hallin, Daniel C., e Paolo Mancini. 2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Joachim, Jutta M. Agenda Setting, the UN, and NGOs: Gender Violence and Reproductive Rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007;

Mary Kaldor, L'altra potenza : la società civile: diritti umani, democrazia, globalizzazione, Milano: Università Bocconi, 2004;

Megan Boler (ed.), Digital Media and Democracy: tactics in hard times, Cambridge (MA) ; London : MIT press, 2008

Elena Apostoli Cappello, Tutti siamo indigeni! Giochi di specchi tra Europa e Chiapas, Padova, CLEUP, 2013

Burton, Eric, Dietrich, Anne, R. Harisch, Immanuel and C. Schenck, Marcia. Navigating Socialist Encounters: Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and East Germany during the Cold War, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021;

Carroll, Fred. Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017.

Samantha Christiansen, Zachary A. Scarlett (eds.), The Third World in the global 1960s, New York, Berghahn Books, 2015;

Francisca De Haan et al., Women's Activism: Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present, London, Taylor & Francis 2013

Lucy Delap, Femminismi. Una storia globale, Milano 2023

Daniel Hallin, The uncensored war. The media and Vietnam, 1986.

Christoph Kalter, The discovery of the Third World. Decolonization and the rise of the New Left in France,1950-1976, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2016

Pietilä, Hilkka and Jeanne Vickers, Making Women Matter: The Role of the United Nations. London: Zed Books 1990;

Pietilä Hilkka, Engendering the Global Agenda. The Story of Women and the United Nations, NGLS, 2002

Alex Khasnabish, Zapatismo beyond borders. New imaginations of political possibility, University of Toronto Press, 2008

Jocelyn Olcott, International women's year. The greatest consciousness-raising event in history, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017;

Bianca Pomeranzi, Femministe di un unico mondo, a cura di C. Cotti, Roma 2024;

Maurizio Zinni, Schermi radioattivi. L'America, Hollywood e l'incubo nucleare da Hiroshima alla crisi di Cuba, Venezia: Marsilio, 2013

International communication and globalization: a critical introduction, edited by Ali Mohammadi, London [etc.]: Sage Publications, 1997

Fare Opinione. Numero monografico della rivista Il Mulino, n. 4, 2025.

Sulla cresta dell'onda. Numero monografico della rivista Zapruder, n. 34, 2014.

Teaching methods

For the preparation of class discussions the texts will be uploaded on the "didactic materials" related to teaching.The course includes lectures alternating with debates in which active participation of students is required. Some readings to be discussed in class will be assigned in the first week of lessons. 

For the preparation of class discussions the texts will be uploaded on the "Virtuale" platform related to course.

 

Assessment methods

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered to be attending. 

This 6 CFU course can be chosen as a part of the 12 CFU Integrate course "Profili di storia globale (C.I.) (LM)". If the student has the Integrated Course (12 CFU) in his/her study plan, the final grade will result from the arithmetic average of the marks obtained in the two parts (“Global history: Public sphere and mass communication (1) (LM)" and “Global history: Economics, Environment, Society (1) (LM).

Attending students are asked to produce a written paper on a theme pertaining to one of the two modules, to be agreed with the teacher of the respective module. For a 12-credit-essay it is required a length of about 7.500 words.

The paper will be evaluated both in terms formal aspects of presentation and articulation of the work, clarity of exposition,  accuracy in the use of historiographic concepts and categories, and in terms of the ability of critical elaboration of the bibliographic material used and its coherence in relation to the subject of the paper. In the evaluation of attending students, systematic and active participation in class will also be taken into account.

In addition to the final paper, not-attending students must take a written exam - valid for both the two modules of the integrated course - on the following books:

Sebastian Conrad, Storia Globale. Un'introduzione, Carocci, Roma 2015. 

Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, La terra, la storia e noi. L'evento antropocene, Roma, Treccani, 2019

The exam, to be done in 90 minuts, will consist of open question, three for each book. The final grade for not-attending students will be the average of the marks obtained in the written exam and the final paper (the topic of which must be agreed upon with one of the two instructors of the integrated course).

N.B.: Regarding assessment, limited, declared, and non-substantial use of AI is permitted for independent preparatory activities (e.g., concept maps). Substantial use for completing parts of the exam itself is not allowed.

Based on the criteria outlined above, the following grading scale will be applied:

Excellent (30 cum laude)

Very Good (28-30)

Good (25-27)

Fair (22-24)

Sufficient (18-21)

Exam sessions for the submission of the final paper will begin in January 2027 (exact dates will be published on Alma Esami). In any case, four submission sessions will be guaranteed between January and July 2027, with two additional sessions between September and November 2027.

Written exam sessions for non-attending students, scheduled respectively by each instructor (Prof. Rosenboim and Prof. Tolomelli), cover both modules (exact dates are published on Alma Esami).

N.B.: Students with Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) or temporary/permanent disabilities are advised to contact the relevant University office (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/it) well in advance. That office will propose any necessary accommodations to the students; these proposals must be submitted to the instructor for approval at least 15 days beforehand, so that the instructor can assess their suitability in relation to the course's learning objectives.

Teaching tools

The weekly readings will be made available on the "Teaching materials" related to teaching. Knowledge of English is desirable as some of the readings will be in English.

Students who require specific services and adaptations to teaching activities due to a disability or specific learning disorders (SLD), must first contact the appropriate office:LINK

Office hours

See the website of Marica Tolomelli