94206 - TECNICHE E PRATICHE DELL'INFORMAZIONE

Learning outcomes

Students will learn to analyze the public sphere in a sociological perspective, with a specific focus on the latest developments of the current debate surrounding the concept of public sphere and on the processes of construction of social knowledge of public issues in the context of the contemporary hybrid media landscape, including the role of algorithmic sources and the new global actors.

Course contents

The complete “integrated” course is called Public Sphere and Information: it is articulated into two different but interconnected modules (Theory of the Public Sphere and Practices and Techniques in News and Information Production). Therefore it is important to consider both programmes and lists of required readings as belonging to a single course.

1. In Theory of the Public Sphere we will introduce:

1.1. The main aspects of the debate on the spaces where public opinion is formed, starting from the analysis famously elaborated by Jürgen Habermas.

1.2. The contemporary controversies regarding the relationship between the public sphere and the media, particularly with the advent of what the sociologist John Thompson calls “mediated online interaction”.

1.3. The social construction of public problems: which arenas, which actors, which mechanisms.

2. Practices and Techniques in News and Information Production will “test” the hypotheses illustrated in the first part of the course, aiming to highlight the empirical problems and the more or less resilient practices that journalistic professional routines employ to navigate the landscape of hybrid contemporary news media.

Among the issues covered by the module are:

2.1. Computational journalism and the implications of the use of algorithms and A.I. in the production and aggregation of news online.

2.2. The complex relationship between news and social media.

2.3. The most recent developments in the debate around the construction of objectivity in journalistic language in the age of “post-truth” and “fake news”.

2.4. New forms of digital journalism and the professional identity of journalists.

Readings/Bibliography

Required readings for both attending and non attending students:

1. J. Habermas, The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article, in "New German Critique", n.3, 1974, pp. 49-552.
2. A. Bruns, Gatewatching and News Curation, Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere, New York, Peter Lang, 2018
3. M. Hindman, La trappola di Internet. Come l'economia digitale costruisce monopoli e mina la democrazia, Torino, Einaudi, 2019.

Readings for interactive workshops (see "Teaching methods"):

- AgCom, L'informazione alla prova dei giovani, Report 2020 (e altri report AgCom di cui si discuterà in aula).

- J. Allen , B. Howland, M. Mobius, D. Rothschild , D. J. Watts, Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem, in "Science Advance", n. 6, 3 Avril 2020, pp. 1-6.

- E. Bell and T. Owen, The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Reengineered Journalism, in "Columbia Journalism Review", 29-3-2017.

- M. Coddington, Clarifying Journalism’s Quantitative Turn. A typology for evaluating data journalism, computational journalism, and computer-assisted reporting, in "Digital Journalism", 3, 2015, pp. 331-348.

- N. Marres, Why We Can't Have Our Facts Back, in "Engaging Science, Technology, and Society", n. 4, 2018, pp. 423-443.

- Reuters, Digital News Report 2019.

- E.C. Tandoc Jr., Z. W. Lim & R. Ling, Defining Fake News, in "Digital Journalism", vol. 6, n. 2, pp. 137-153 (accessibile con credenziali Unibo via EZproxy).

- J. B. Thompson, Mediated Interaction in the Digital Age, in "Theory, Culture & Society", vol. 37n. 1, 2020, pp. 3–28 (accessibile con credenziali Unibo via EZproxy).

- J. Vásquez-Herrero, S. Direito-Rebollal, X. López-García, Ephemeral Journalism: News Distribution Through Instagram Stories, in "Social Media + Society", October-December 2019, pp. 1-13.

Further readings and other materials will be made available during the course and on the course's virtual space.

Teaching methods

Lectures in class, webinars and workshops online and offline, always available also for online attendance.

The two parts of the course are integrated also in the lessons and the interactive workshops: a more detailed calendar will be available at the beginning of the course, and it will include the presence of invited experts and professionals.

The participation to the interactive workshops will be proposed and discussed during the first week, in order to establish an educational agreement with the students.

Assessment methods

The exam will be one and the same for the whole course.

Attending students (online and offline) (i.e. participation to at least 80% of the lessons/workshops):

1. Active and positive participation during the workshops and the webinars: 30% of the final grade.

2. Written paper following the agreements with the teachers during the workshops: 70% of the final grade.

Students not attending the class:

Written exam consisting of multiple-choice and open-ended questions based on the readings listed in the syllabus.

Teaching tools

Online platform for the webinars, slides, videos.

Office hours

See the website of Claudia Capelli