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2020/2021

Political and Parliamentary Journalism

Code: 103083 ECTS Credits: 6
Degree Type Year Semester
2501933 Journalism OT 4 0
The proposed teaching and assessment methodology that appear in the guide may be subject to changes as a result of the restrictions to face-to-face class attendance imposed by the health authorities.

Contact

Name:
Francesc Xavier Giró Martí
Email:
Xavier.Giro@uab.cat

Use of Languages

Principal working language:
catalan (cat)
Some groups entirely in English:
No
Some groups entirely in Catalan:
Yes
Some groups entirely in Spanish:
No

Prerequisites

There is no pre requirement.

Objectives and Contextualisation

 
1. Achieve a critical and responsible view on political journalism and the role of journalists specialized in politics.
 
2. Improve the journalistic techniques acquired in previous courses in order to write news, interviews, columns of analysis and reports.
 
3. Distinguish, use and master the language of formal informative and interpretative genres.
 

Competences

  • Abide by ethics and the canons of journalism, as well as the regulatory framework governing information.
  • Demonstrate a critical and self-critical capacity.
  • Demonstrate ethical awareness as well as empathy with the entourage.
  • Differentiate the discipline’s main theories, its fields, conceptual developments, theoretical frameworks and approaches that underpin knowledge of the subject and its different areas and sub-areas, and acquire systematic knowledge of the media’s structure.
  • Generate innovative and competitive ideas in research and professional practice.
  • Relay journalistic information in the language characteristic of each communication medium, in its combined modern forms or on digital media, and apply the genres and different journalistic procedures.
  • Research, select and arrange in hierarchical order any kind of source and useful document to develop communication products.
  • Respect the diversity and plurality of ideas, people and situations.
  • Use a third language as a working language and means of professional expression in the media.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Conceptualise the theories and techniques of specialised journalism.
  2. Demonstrate a critical and self-critical capacity.
  3. Demonstrate ethical awareness and empathy with the entourage.
  4. Demonstrate practical knowledge of specialised journalism.
  5. Generate innovative and competitive ideas in research and professional practice.
  6. Incorporate the principles of professional ethics in developing narrative journalism specialised in political information and parliamentary articles.
  7. Know how to build texts in a third language that adapt to the structures of journalistic language and apply them to the different theme-based information specialisms.
  8. Relay in the language specific to each communication medium narrative journalism specialised in political and parliamentary information.
  9. Research, select and arrange in hierarchical order any kind of source and useful document to develop communication products.
  10. Respect the diversity and plurality of ideas, people and situations.
  11. Use interactive communication resources to process, produce and relay information in the production of specialised information.

Content

 1. Journalism Specialized in Politics. Concept of Politics. Praxis and Theory. News, History and Prospective. Actors and Systems. Behaviors, structures, processes. Political languages and journalistic languages.

2. The area and sections of Policy. Importance of the borders in the configuration of the Information sections. Internal politics Foreign policy Predominance of the policy in the Opinion sections. Editorial line and pluralism in Information and Opinion.
 
3. Relationships of power, structuring dimension of political information. Concepts of power. The resources of power.
 
 
4. The newspapers as structures of power. Business power and editorial power. The newspapers, actors of the political system. Patriarchal power. The permanent goals: profit and influence. The temporary objectives. The strategic resources.
 
5. Feminist perspectives on power and politics.
 
6. The conflict, basic structure of political information. Concepts of conflict. Protagonists, antagonists, third parties.Conflicts between peers, between unequal. Levels of analysis. Dimensions: intensity, violence. The conflict as communication. Conflict analysis and resolution.
 
7. The newspapers, narrators, commentators and participants of conflicts. The selection of publicity disputes: inclusions, exclusions, hierarchy of conflicts included.
 
8. The explanation and understanding of political conflicts. Explain and understand the global and individual scales. The causal explanation and the explanation based on supposed historical or sociological laws.
 
9. The narration of political conflicts. From news: hard to soft; negative and positive; sudden and unpredictable and announced and predictable; developing and tracking. Political journalistic genres.
 
10. Critical Discourse Analysis. The arguments about political conflicts. By induction, deduction, comparison. Argumentative texts and journalistic genres.
 
11. Political news and contextualization. A chain of decisions for exclusion, inclusion and hierarchy of news,actors, sources of current information and contextualization information. Routine decisions and strategic decisions. Short, medium and long-term political news. Synchrony and diachrony. Revisions and forecasts of events, tendencies and political processes.

Methodology

TEACHING METHODOLOGY:

We will try to take into account the gender perspective – as the rule tell us to write it – accross the whole program.

THEORY

The theory classes will alternate debates around previously read texts and master classes.

PRACTICES:

1. Individual ones:

- Write an in-depth report on a conflict of political current affairs

- Prepare 5 brief informative news texts.

2. Teams of 3 or 4 members will deploy a group task: Analyze current conflicts and the coverage of the media and make a presentation to the class.

CALENDAR: 

The calendar will be available on the first day of class. Students will find all information on the Virtual Campus: the description of the activities, teaching materials, and any necessary information for the proper follow-up of the subject. In case of a change of teaching modality for health reasons, teachers will
make readjustments in the schedule and methodologies.



Activities

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
laboratory practical sessions 16 0.64 9, 8, 4, 6, 10, 7, 11
on line sessions 20 0.8 1, 2, 6
seminar sessions 15 0.6 9, 3, 2, 5, 6, 10
Type: Supervised      
Grading 6 0.24 9, 3, 4, 6, 11
Tutorial meetings 3 0.12 8, 2
Type: Autonomous      
Writing 6 journalistic articles 54 2.16 9, 8, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11
reading and studying of 4 texts 30 1.2 1, 2, 6

Assessment

Without the in-depth report or with less than four brief articles, students are not entitled to be evaluated.

Evaluation:

Of the theoretical part: the mark will be a function of the written summary of the debate in class and the intervention of the student about the texts they had read. This mark will be worth 30% of the final grade. The summary will be turn in the last week of the course, but at the end of every session there will be an evaluation of the discussion.

Of the brief individual texts, the average mark will be worth 30% of the final mark. The evaluation of the articles will take place at the following practical session.

Of the report in depth, the mark will be worth 30% of the final mark. It will mark at the end of the course.

Of the analysis of the conflict, the mark will be worth 10% of the final mark. It will take place the day it happens upon a calendar organized in the third week of the course.

Review of the marks will take place continuously at any time in tutorial sessions.

Recovering:

Students will be entitled to the revaluation of the subject. They should present a minimum of activities that equals two-thirds of the total grading.

Those who do not pass, can give up or write a new report and if it is ok, it will obtain a mark good enough to be approved.

Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Of the conflict analysis and its coverage 10% 0.5 0.02 4, 2
Participation in discussing 4 theoretical texts 30% 1.5 0.06 1, 3, 2, 6
Writing 5 short articles 30% 3 0.12 9, 8, 4, 10, 7, 11
Writing an in-depth report 30% 1 0.04 8, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11

Bibliography

Basic Bibliography

ALLEN, AMY, "Feminist Perspectives on Power", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/feminist-power/>.

BORRAT, Héctor. 1989. El periódico, actor político. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.

BASTENIER, Miguel Ángel. 2001. El blanco móvil: Curso de periodismo. Madrid: El País-Aguilar.

BOUZA-BREY, Luis. 2004. “El poder y los sistemas políticos”, en Miquel Caminal (editor). Manual de Ciencia Política. Madrid: Tecnos. P. 39-84. [Cuarta reimpresión de la segunda edición de 1999].

CAMINAL, Miquel (coord.). 1999. Manual de Ciencia Política. Madrid: Tecnos.

CHOMSKY, Noam & HERMAN, Edward. 1990. Los guardianes de la libertad. Barcelona: Grijalbo Mondadori.

DEL ÁGUILA, Rafael. 2005. “La política: el poder y la legitimidad”, en Rafael del Águila (editor) Manual de Ciencia Política. Madrid: Editorial Trotta. P. 21-34. [Cuarta Edición; primera de 1997].

GIRÓ, Xavier. 2004. “La información sobre los países del Sur en los medios del Norte”. In Contreras, Fernando R. y Sierra, Francisco (coords.) (2004). Culturas deguerra. Madrid: Frónesis-Cátedra-PUV. P. 155-183.

GIRÓ, XAVIER. 2010.  “Periodismo político. Discursos y grietas: La lógica de los actores, los limites de los medios y las metas periodísticas”. A Camacho Markina, Idoia (coord.): La especialización en periodismo. Formarse para informar. Ed. Comunicación Social, Sevilla/Zamora. (pp. 75-95)

IBARRA, Pedro i IDOYAGA, Petxo. 1998. «Racionalidad democràtica, transmisión ideològica y medios de comunicación». ZER, núm. 5. P 157-181.

VAN DIJK, Teun. (1996). "Opiniones e ideologías en la prensa". Voces y Culturas, núm. 10.

WOLFSFELD, Gadi. 1997. Media and Political Conflict. News from the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Supplementary

 

CHOMSKY, Noam & HERMAN, Edward. 1988. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Panteón Books.

CHOMSKY, Noam. 1992. "La ilusión necesaria". Archipiélago. Cuadernos de crítica de la Cultura,  núm. 9.

CHRISTIANS, Clifford G.; GLASSER, Theodore L.; MCQUAIL, Denis; NORDENSTRENG, Kaarle; y WHITE, Robert A. 2009. Normative Theories of the Media. Journalism in Democratic Societies. Urbana y Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

FAIRCLOUGH, Norman. 2001. “Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research”, en Wodak, R. y Meyer. M. (ed) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London:Sage. P.121-138. [Existe traducción en la editorial Gedisa (Barcelona), 2003].

FERNÁNDEZ DEL MORAL, Javier i ESTEVE RAMÍREZ, Francisco. 1993. Fundamentos de la Información Periodística Especializada. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis.

GIRÓ, Xavier. 2007. “Enfoques analíticos críticos sobre el discurso de la cobertura informativa de conflictos”. En Telleschi, Tiziano; Sandoval Forero, Eduardo Andrés (coords.) Espacio y tiempo en la globalización. Una visión de la transparencia en la información. Universita' di Pisa y Comisión Estatal para el Acceso a la Información Pública del Estado de Sinaloa, Toluca (México). Pg. 199-220.

-   2004. “Esbotzada de barreres en la cobertura de la guerra a l’Iraq”, en Quaderns del CAC número extraordinari - Setembre 2004. P. 179-187.

  - 1997. "La intervención de los media". En Elgenocidio bosnio. Documentos para un debate. Madrid: Los libros de La Catarata.

LYNCH, Jake. 2002. Reporting the World. Berkshire (Inglaterra): Conflict and Peace Forums.

MACBRIDE, Sean. 1981. Voces Múltiples, un solo mundo. México- Madrid: FCE. [International Comission for the Study of Communication Problems (UNESCO). (1980). Many Voices, one World: Communication and society, today and tomorrow. Paris and New York: UNESCO).

MILLS-BROWN, Lisa 2008. “Journalism, Political”. En Encyclopedia of Political Communication. SAGE Publications. 21 Sep. 2009. <http:www.sage-ereference.com/politicalcommunication/Article_n317.html>.

RIVERS, W. & SCHRAMM, W. 1969. Responsibility in Mass Communication. New York: Herper and Row.

WEBER, M. 1944. Economía y Sociedad. México: FCE.

WOLFSFELD, Gadi. 2008. "Political Conflict." Encyclopedia of Political Communication. SAGE Publications. 3 Sep. 2009.

<http://sage-ereference.com/politicalcommunication/Article_n501.html>.