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Digital Narratives and New Formats

Code: 42448 ECTS Credits: 6
2024/2025
Degree Type Year
4313227 Media, Communication and Culture OT 0

Contact

Name:
David Vidal Castell
Email:
david.vidal@uab.cat

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

- Fundamental notions about the functioning of the logic of the genres of discourse.

- Basic knowledge about informative, interpretative and opinional journalistic genres: typology, varieties, functions, evolution in recent years.

- Fundamental notions of narratology: elements of composition and style of the story.

- Descriptive knowledge from the field of structure of mass communication about the media system and its evolution in the Western environment and, especially, in the Catalan context: the moment of the press in its different supports, the appearance of the new digital media , the competition with conventional supports


Objectives and Contextualisation

Journalism, a modern industrial activity linked to technological development and the human capacity of the word, is going through a particularly relevant moment of transformation, directly related to the latest developments in these two areas that characterize it: a formidable digital revolution that has transformed media of journalism and communication, as well as consumption and production, on the one hand, and an undeniable linguistic and discursive crisis that affects the credibility of words. As Ignacio Ramonet recently pointed out, the media ecosystem has flown through the air due to the impact of the digital revolution and the development of social networks (Ramonet, 2011, p.11). This crisis is not only economic or technological, but systemic, and is therefore not a cycle or evolution, but the structural functioning of journalism itself. This systemic crisis and the emergence of new digital media, increasingly relevant in terms of information consumption, have had an impact on the formats and genres of journalism. New consumption models and new audiences generate new communication needs that make progress the always unstable genres of media discourse in search of rhetorical success. On the other hand, as an expensive counterpart of this communicative enrichment, we find that the presence of reports, chronicles and analysis, the genres of quality journalism, is being threatened because production routines become more expensive and slow and are often far from the characteristics of the new on-line information paradigm: instantaneity, interactivity, emotionality, the iconic-visual and hypertextual superficiality. The objective of the module isto identify the productive logics in the adaptation of the journalistic genres to the new work environments, and to be competent in the production (and in the proposal) of these new informative forms grafted with multimedia expressive resources.

Competences

  • Analyse the impact of media groups' strategies of social communication with the aim of promoting new, participative forms of culture and communication.
  • Continue the learning process, to a large extent autonomously.
  • Lead and work in interdisciplinary teams.
  • Plan, direct and evaluate media communication strategies to construct complex informational topics.
  • Use acquired knowledge as a basis for originality in the application of ideas, often in a research context.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Adapting traditional journalistic writing formats to digital formats and new narratives
  2. Analysis of how the new media information system.
  3. Continue the learning process, to a large extent autonomously.
  4. Know new literary and audiovisual narratives.
  5. Lead and work in interdisciplinary teams.
  6. Recognize and identify the diversity of journalistic genres and variants and hybrids.
  7. Use acquired knowledge as a basis for originality in the application of ideas, often in a research context.

Content

1. The genres of discourse and its linguistic and social logic. The descriptive and non-normative theory of the genres: the formalists to Bakhtin. Rhetoric and communication.

2. The crisis of discourses and media credibility. The new orality. The postficció: from non-fiction to creative documentary. Informative superabundance, superficiality and entertainment. The absence of listening attitude and the new media discursive strategies: irony, repetition and fragmentation. The evolution of formats and innovation in genres.

3. The journalistic genres: theory and criticism of its evolution and its adaptation to new environments. Of the normativity in the description: the genres as hybrid forms. The crisis of the genres in quality journalism.

4. The information society and the constitution and current decline of the network society: new media, new formats and the new logic of information consumption. The emergence of social media in the production of journalism: web 2.0 and information. The new platform culture: from network society to blob communication.

5. Narrative features of new digital formats: instantaneity, fragmentation, polyphony, multisupport. Incidence of these features in the modulation of story logic and narrative resources: construction of the character, choice of point of view, plot composition (time/space).

6. The culture of the platform: from capitalism to surveillance to containment. The blob communication. Techno-hydraulic capitalism.


7. A postcanon of commented examples: the new literary and audiovisual narratives. The afterpop and the postmodern.


Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Master classes 20 0.8 2, 4, 6, 7
Tutorials 10 0.4 2, 4, 6, 7
Type: Supervised      
Reading aimed at putting together and debating 10 0.4 2, 3, 4, 6, 7
Type: Autonomous      
Personal study, readings, preparation of critical reviews, partial work and final tutoring work 55 2.2 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

The proposed teaching methodology and evaluation activities may undergo some modifications depending on the health authorities' attendance restrictions.

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.

The teaching methodology will be based on:


- Classroom sessions.

- Group discussion sessions of the proposed readings weekly, biweekly or monthly.

- Customized tutorials about the readings and the individual work proposals for the module.

Complementary training activities:

- Debates on a topic of journalistic or academic news in the field of the module.

- Visualization and commentary of audiovisual documents (films, reports, interviews).

SPECIAL SESSIONS

In two sessions throughout the course (around session 6 and around session 10) discussions will be held with professional experts responsible for new media, and with academic researchers dereference within the fields of new digital narratives (video games, data journalism, webdoc, etc.)

EVALUATION SESSIONS

The last two sessions of the course will be devoted to the oral presentation of the results of the tutored work before the class. The exhibition will be part of the evaluation in a percentage that can range between 10 and 20%.

IMPORTANT WARNING: The student who performs any irregularity (copy, plagiarism, identity theft...) will be qualified with 0 in this assignment or exam. In case there are several irregularities, the final grade of the subject will be 0.

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Participation in classroom discussions about readings and problems raised. 20% 10 0.4 2, 3, 4, 6, 7
Continuous evaluation work: elaboration of critical reviews + preparation of partial analysis of new formats 30% 15 0.6 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Tutored final work 50% 30 1.2 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7

The evaluation will be done on the participation in the classroom debates (20% of the final grade) where the follow-up of the readings will be valued, their understanding and the originality and rigor of the contributions; Secondly, continuous assessment (30%), which will be, as indicated below, two critical book reviews of the proposed bibliography plus a minimum of journalistic writing adapted to the new digital narratives; and, finally, the final work tutored on an aspect of the syllabus in which the doctorate wants to deepen, in a concrete, focused, critical and original (50% of the final grade).

In case the student does not fulfill these tasks, singularly the final work, they will not be able to pass.


The final work, as well as the rest of the work delivered, will be corrected and commented in a personal tutorial session with the student.

RE-EVALUATION

In the event that the student does not pass the subject, he will have a reasonable time, after the evaluation and before the closing of acts, and provided that the suspended note is greater than 3,5, to redo the work or suspended work, under the tutoring by the teacher.

 

NON-ASSESSABLE

The student will be NON-ASSESSABLE if he does not hand in the tutored final work, and even if he has carried out some of the continuous assessment activities described. On the other hand, if you have not done some continuous assessment work but have done the final, you will be assessed.


Bibliography

Bajtin, M.M. (1985): Estética de la creación verbal. México: Siglo XXI.

Benjamin, Walter, “El narrador”, en Para una crítica de la violencia y otros ensayos. Iluminaciones IV, Madrid, Taurus, 1998, pp. 111-134.

Bogost, I., Ferrarri, S., i Schweizer, B. (2010) Newsgames: Journalism at Play. Cambridge: Massachussets Institute Technology Press.

 Chillón, A. (2014) La palabra facticia. Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès): Aldea Global.

Castells, M. (1997-2001) La era de la información (3 vols.) Madrid: Alianza editorial.

Covell, A. (2000) Digital convergence. Newport: A.P.G.

De la Peña, N., Weil, P., i Llobera, J. (2010) Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of News, a Presence Vol. 19, Issue 4.

 Díaz Noci, J. I Salaverría, R. (2003) Manual de redacción ciberperiodística. Madrid: Ariel.

 Deterding, S.; Dixon, D.; Khaled, R. et al. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. A: Proceedings of the 15th international academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments (pp. 9-15). Nueva York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040

Duch, Ll. i Chillón, A. "La narración interminable", en Un ser de mediaciones. Antropología de la comunicación, vol. I, Barcelona, Herder, 2012

DD.AA. (1998-fins a l'actualitat) Informe de la comunicació a Catalunya (diverses edicions). Barcelona: Incom.

DD.AA. (2005) Comunicación audiovisual digital. Nuevos medios, nuevos usos, nuevas formas. Barcelona. UOC.

Espada, A. y Hernández Busto, E. (eds.) (2009) El fin de los periódicos. Barcelona: Duomo

García-Ortega, A. i García-Avilés, J. A.. (2018). Los newsgames como estrategia narrativa en el periodismo transmedia: propuesta de un modelo de análisis. Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación/Mediterranean Journal of Communication, 9(1), 327-346. https://www.doi.org/10.14198/MEDCOM2018.9.1.19

Garde, Cristina (2022) Més enllà del mirall negre: una defensa del periodisme en l'era de la comunicació blob i del capitalisme de la contenció. (Tesi doctoral inèdita). Bellaterra: Dept. de Mitjans, Comunicació i Cultura.

Hernández, L.G. (2017) Periodismo Literario: el arte de contar historias. Salamanca: Comunicación Social.

Kapp, K. M. (2013). The gamification of learning and instruction fieldbook: Ideas into practice. London: John Wiley & Sons.

Kamiya, G. (2009): “La muerte de las noticias”. En Espada, A. y Hernández Busto, E. (eds.): El fin de los periódicos. Barcelona: Duomo, pp 101-110.

Larrondo, A. (2008) Los géneros de la redacción ciberpriodística. Bilbao: UPV.

Marczewski, A. C. (2015). Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play. London: Blurb Inc.

Negroponte, N. (1995) El mundo digital. Barcelona: Ediciones B.

Pisan, F. y Piotet, D. (2008): La alquimia de las multitudes: cómo la web está cambiando el mundo. Madrid: Paidós.

Ramonet, I. (1998): La tiranía de la comunicación. Barcelona: Debate.

Ramonet, I. (2011): La explosión del periodismo. Madrid: Clave intelectual.

Ricoeur, Paul, “Narratividad, fenomenología y hermenéutica”, en Anàlisi, nº 25, 2000

Salaverría, R. (2005) Cibermedios: el impacto de Internet en los medios de comunicación en España. Sevilla: Comunicación Social.

Starr, P. (2009): “Adiós a la era de los periódicos”. En Espada, A. y Hernández Busto, E. (eds.): El fin de los periódicos. Barcelona:Duomo, pp 111-141.

Steiner, G. (1991): Presencias reales. Barcelona: Destino.

Vidal Castell, D. (2002): “La transformació de la teoria del periodisme: una crisi de paradigma?”. En Anàlisi, 28, pp. 21-54.

Vidal Castell, D. (2005): El malson de Chandos. Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès): Aldea Global.

Zichermann (2013). The gamification revolution: How readers leverage game mechanics to crush the competition. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Zuboff. S. (2020) La era del capitalismo de la vigilancia. Barcelona: Paidós.


Software

The course does not require any specific program, beyond conventional word processors for the preparation of the works and the presentations.


Language list

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(TEm) Theory (master) 40 Spanish second semester afternoon