JRN1010 Analysing News and Media

In Semester 3, 2023 this course will be delivered as a Transition (9 week) semester, commencing on 13 November 2023 and concluding on 12 January 2024.

At a time when the digital revolution is spawning an unprecedented flood of information and disinformation each day, we need to be able to judge the credibility and reliability of news reports, and we need to understand why that matters. This course provides critical perspectives on what makes journalism distinct among other forms of content and communications, and examines the role journalism plays in the functions of a society.

This course is designed to teach students how to become more discriminating news producers and/or consumers. The course will seek to help students recognise reliable information and teach them how to apply their critical-thinking skills so they can act on such information. As part of their instruction, students also will learn how the journalistic process works and how professional journalists make decisions.

On successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

1. identify and describe the concept of news literacy and why it matters;
2. critically evaluate and analyse various forms of information to classify news from other forms of content and information, such as propaganda and opinion;
3. identify evidence, bias and fairness, assertion and verification, and inference and influence in journalistic work;
4. effectively deconstruct written and visual texts, and communicate an analysis of the journalistic process and how journalists make decisions;
5. exercise judgment to evaluate the ethical standards in journalistic processes and decisions;