Unit name | News and Networks (Level C Special Topic) |
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Unit code | HIST14004 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Dr. Masterson |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites | |
School/department | Department of History (Historical Studies) |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Since the explosion of mass media in the nineteenth-century, the British news establishment has expanded and innovated at an increasingly frenetic pace, changing our experience of war, our dispensation of justice, our ideas of the ‘world’ to which we belong, and our notions about what is ‘newsworthy’. From the bawdy songs of the early nineteenth-century broadsheets, to the blood-curdling illustrations of the Victorian penny-dreadful, to the clandestine photographs of the twentieth-century tabloid press and the emergence of moving images, technological revolutions have allowed the news to be reported in ever more graphic detail. The networks of transmission, both machine and human, have not only increased in speed, they have operated to further the agendas of those in power or worked to tear down those same institutions. This special topic unit will explore important themes in the study of news and networks including the reporting of conflicts, the influence of media coverage on crime, the battle between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ news, and the influence of American news culture in Britain. An exciting array of printed and audio-visual materials will be available to students for their independent research projects, including newspapers, cartoons, illustrations, newsreels, radio broadcasts and television reporting.
By the end of the unit students should have:
10x 2 hour weekly seminar
2-hour unseen written examination (summative, 100%)