SEMINARS SPRING 2008
HONR 219E Media with an Accent: Comparing Press and Broadcasting
in a Global Context
Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Prof. Kalyani Chadha, Philip Merrill College of Journalism
Did you know:
· More daily newspapers are published in Paris than in either Washington
D.C. or New York?
· The BBC World Service reaches more people than any other international
broadcaster?
· Telenovelas produced in Latin America are broadcast 6 days a week in
prime time in more than 100 countries
While popular rhetoric suggests that we live in an increasingly interconnected globalized world in which time and space have collapsed and media experiences are increasingly uniform, the reality is often different. Indeed, despite the pervasive presence of global media organizations such as CNN and MTV that broadcast content around the world, media systems in different countries continue to be characterized by significant differences in press and broadcasting laws, business and economic structure, access to technology, and nature of journalistic practices, resulting often in variations in both content and perspective.
The purpose of this course is to provide students with a broad overview
of the press and broadcasting systems that operate around the world as
well as to compare their characteristics with media in the United States.
Drawing on examples from various countries, some broad questions we hope
to analyze are: How do economics, politics, culture and history impact
the workings of media systems? What are the effects of the globalization
on media world-wide? Does the presence of a free market automatically
lead to a free press?
The course will be taught through a combination of lectures, discussions, and visual presentations. Students will be expected to complete all of the readings before class, participate in classroom discussions, conduct a research project on the media in a particular country/region of their choice, write a paper on it, and present their findings to the class.
Possible readings include: John C. Merrill and Arnold de Beer (editors), Global Journalism; Robert McKenzie, Comparing Media From Around the World. Possible visual media will include: Media and Democracy in the Arab World (about Al Jazeera); and Telenovelas: Love, TV, and Power.
CORE: Interdisciplinary and Emerging Issues [IE] and Diversity [D]
