This summer term, I am teaching a seminar on Creating Publics: Journalism in Comparative Perspective. The basic aim is to critically evaluate the historical, technological and cultural connections between journalism and concepts of publics. Instead of perpetuating the close alignment of journalism, publics and democracy, the focus in this seminar will be on a contextualized reflection of concepts of publics, the role and practices of journalists, their audiences and media of communication. We are interested in the changing conditions that continuously uphold journalism as a social structure of public communication. Follow the course via #createpublics or check the assigned texts. And yes, structural transformations of the public sphere will be addressed. In English.
Block 1: Critical Concepts, Histories and Theories of Publics
27 April Prehistory of the Bourgeois Public Sphere
- Habermas, Jürgen (1991). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Download: http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/habermas_structural_trans_pub_sphere.pdf Chapters 1-4 (p. 1-31).
4 May The Ideal of the Public Sphere and Public Opinion
- Habermas, Jürgen (1991). Chapter 5 (p. 31-43) and Chapter 12 (p. 89-102).
- Optional: Scannell, Paddy. (2007). “Communication and Publicness. Habermas. Germany (USA/uk), 1950s–1990s.” Media and Communication, 233-259. London: Sage. http://media-ucn.co.uk/Seminar%20Readings/Soc%203016/Scannell%20on%20Habermas.pdf
11 May Critique of the Public Sphere, Mass Media and Pluralization
- Habermas, Jürgen (1991). Chapter 20 (p. 181-195)
- Keane, John (1995). “Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere.” The Communication Review 1: 1-22. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714429509388247
18 May The Reading Audience of News
- Leonard, Thomas C. (1995). News for All: Americaʼs Coming-of-Age with the Press. Oxford University Press. Part One The Creation of an Audience. p. 3-46
25 May The Networked Public
- Dijck, José van (2012). “Facebook as a Tool for Producing Sociality and Connectivity.” Television & New Media 13(2): 160-176. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1527476411415291
1 June The End of Journalistic Hegemony?
- Nerone, John (2015). “Journalism’s Crisis of Hegemony.” Javnost – The Public 22(4): 313-327. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2015.1091614
8 June no session
Block 2: Publics and their Media
15 June News and the Newspaper
- Schudson, Michael (2013). “Fourteen Or Fifteen Generations: News as a Cultural Form and Journalism as a Historical Formation.” American Journalism 30(1): 29-35. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2013.767695
- Schudson, Michael (1991). “Preparing the Minds of the People: Three Hundred Years of the American Newspaper.” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings 100: 421-443. http://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44517753.pdf
22 June Satellite Publics
- Carey, James W. (1980). “Changing Communications Technology and the Nature of the Audience.” Journal of Advertising 9(2): 3-9, 43.
- Arceneaux, Noah (2013). “News on the Air: The New York Herald, Newspapers, and Wireless Telegraphy, 1899–1917.” American Journalism 30(2): 160-181. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2013.788439
29 June Journalism and the Network
- Dahlgren, Peter (1996). “Media Logic in Cyberspace: Repositioning Journalism and Its Publics.” Javnost – The Public 3(3): 59-72. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13183222.1996.11008632
- boyd, danah. (2011). “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites, edited by Zizi Papacharissi, 39-58. New York: Routledge
Block 3: Publics in Transnational Perspective
6 July Transnational Publics and the Arab Spring
… guest and text announcement follows
13 July subject to be determined