Overview of Course

This course will introduce students to national and transnational media systems in countries they will visit or pass by. They will learn about media flows, for example how Bollywood movies circulate around the world. But the course will pay particular attention to how journalism operates in each system. Students will learn about historical and contemporary international journalism. One example: they will study how American reporting of the Vietnam war changed as the American involvement in the war deepened. Students will be exposed to a wide variety of media systems, including those in countries where news and information is state controlled and journalism serves the interests of the state or the party that runs the state. Students will use port calls to investigate and report on news and other media products and gain further insight into the media systems in the country at hand.