AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to provide students with knowledge of the main techniques for understanding and reporting news, taking into account the role and professional ethics of journalists, which are now being challenged by social media. The lessons are designed to help students learn through active engagement with major current events and with the methods of mainstream media. Attendees take part in simulated exercises through which their skills can be assessed across different forms of journalism, from news reporting to politics, from sports to press offices. The objective is to train students to understand the dynamics of the journalistic world and to be able to apply their experience in a publishing house or a communications office.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course is divided into two parts. In the first part, it explores the historical and methodological entanglements between the social sciences and journalism; examines theories and concepts that help understand the impact of journalistic knowledge on society and vice versa; and discusses the main tools for a critical analysis of media representations and news.

In the second part, the course addresses journalistic language as the passage from facts to news: selecting, verifying, ordering, attributing, narrating. A news story is not simply something that happens. It is something that becomes relevant for an audience, within a context, through sources, words, images and relations of power.

The course provides tools for understanding how journalistic content is generated, constructed and evaluated across different media. The aim is to enable students to recognise a news, assess its angle and relevance, critically read sources and informational materials, and distinguish between information, interpretation and organised communication.

By the end of the course, students will be able to identify the newsworthiness criteria of a given event, select and evaluate sources, structure a written, audio or audiovisual piece, prepare an interview, and recognise the structure of the main journalistic formats.

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures with case discussion.

Analysis of articles, audiovisual products, interviews, press releases, newswire dispatches and journalistic materials.

Guest contributions from information and communication professionals.

Individual or group exercise, to be chosen from among the following: article, reportage, interview, investigative proposal, video or audio script.

Students in a certificated condition of handicap or learning disorder are warmly encouraged to contact the lecturer, at the beginning of the course, in order to agree teaching and exam methods that, still respecting the course aims, take into account the individual learning needs and offer adequate compensatory instruments.

To request compensatory tools or dispensatory measures, students with disabilities or SLD must fill in the dedicated Webform available athttps://unige.it/disabilita-dsa, at least 7 working days before the exam.

Students with SEN may instead send their request by e-mail to the lecturer, copying the Department Representative, Prof. Aristide Canepa (aristide.canepa@unige.it) and the Inclusion Office (inclusione.studenti@info.unige.it). Requests from students will be assessed by the lecturer and may be approved or rejected.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The news: the passage from facts to news; newsworthiness, public interest, agenda setting and disintermediation.

Sources, verification and power: the relationship with sources and agencies; verification, attribution and right of reply; access to power, background information, privileged sources and external pressures.

Writing and formats: chronicle, interview, reportage, investigation and feature; angle, lead, structure and inverted pyramid; writing for print, web, radio, podcast and television; images, voice and editing.

Information and communication: press offices, spokespersons and public relations; institutional, political, social and corporate communication; press releases, press conferences and media events; the boundary between informing, orienting, promoting and manipulating.

Ethics and the profession: deontology, satire, newsroom life, freelancing, the Press Council, trade union, working conditions and access to the profession.

Practical exercise: individual or group assignment, to be chosen from among the following: article, reportage, interview, investigative proposal, video or audio script. Discussion of newsworthiness, sources, angle, structure and language.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibliographic references will be provided later.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

FILIPPO TORRE (President)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

The course will take place in the second semester, starting from 1 March.

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

The examination consists of an oral test.