News, Media, & Power

Over the past decade, “fake news” has become part of our everyday vocabulary, both as a source of concern and a tactic of derision; journalists and their audiences have debated the meaning and implications of objectivity as a journalistic norm; and a myriad of social movements that take up digital media practices as tools for activism have emerged throughout the world. This course explores these and related topics, beginning from the premise that news production and digital media practices are powerful exercises in worldmaking. That is to say, news articles, TikTok videos, memes, Twitter threads, etc. shape the way that we know and imagine the world and thus have the capacity to bolster existing power structures or destabilize dominant discourses. Students in this course discuss how particular narratives are constructed, what strategies of representation they employ, and how they achieve truth effects—or not. Further, they examine the complex sociopolitical and cultural contexts that news production and digital media practices are embedded in.