Unit information: News and Networks (Level C Special Topic) in 2014/15

Unit name	News and Networks (Level C Special Topic)
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	HIST13003
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

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.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the unit students should have:

• identified, analysed, and deepened their understanding of the significance of key themes

• understood the historiographical debates that surround the topic

• learned how to work with primary sources

• developed their skills in contributing to and learning from discussion in a small-group environment

Teaching Information

10x 2 hour weekly seminar

Assessment Information

2-hour unseen written examination (summative, 100%)

Reading and References

• Joel H. Wiener, The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s-1914: Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

• Howard Cox and Simon Mowatt, Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014).

• Matthew Rubery, The Novelty of Newspapers: Victorian Fiction after the Invention of the News (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

• Mark Connelly and David Welch, War and the media: reportage and propaganda, 1900-2003 (London, I. B. Tauris, 2005).

• Richard Butsch (ed.), Media and Public Spheres (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).