Order Description
given a choice of questions pertaining to the theoretical readings from the unit. Students will be marked according to their skill in applying theories and debates presented this semester to a news story that was reported in the Australian media this semester. This essay should include proper academic referencing, either Harvard or RPA and a bibliography (not footnotes please).
1. In Understanding News, John Hartley writes:
?News values are neither natural nor neutral. They form a code that sees the world in a very particular (even peculiar) way. News values are, in fact, an ideological code? (2013: 80). Explain news values using a news story and theories discussed this semester.
2. ?To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient? (Robert Entman 1993: 52). Choose a news story or stories from this semester to demonstrate agenda-setting and/or news framing.
3. Oswald Garrison Villard, publisher of the New York Evening Post, said in 1918 that journalists need to present ?both sides of every issue? (1918: 63).
Interrogate this statement, drawing on a current news story and notions of false equivalency and objectivity to make your arguments.
4. What role does court reporting play in society? Refer to the theories of either Benedict Anderson or Michel Foucault to make your argument and use as an example a crime story that has been tried in Sydney courts this semester and reported on by local media. (This could include Caf? Lindt inquest).
Anderson, B 2006, Imagined Communities, Verso, UK.
Entman, R 1993: ?Framing. Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm?, Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51-58
Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and Punish: the birth of a prison. London, Penguin.
Hartley, J 2013, Understanding News, Routledge.
Villard, OG 1918, ?Press Tendencies and Dangers?, Atlantic Monthly, January, pp. 62-66.
Students will be marked according to their skill in applying theories and debates presented this semester to a news story that was reported in the Australian media this semester. This essay should include proper academic referencing, either Harvard or RPA and a bibliography (not footnotes please).
The readings provided in the unit outline are a starting point and for a high mark, students are expected to go beyond these with independent research. Powerpoint slides from each lecture are in the weekly folders and also include references.
