Overview of Course

This course takes on one of the most important and difficult questions of our age: how can people around the world learn what is true and false about the world amid a technological revolution as profound as the development of the printing press? A revolution that has created instant communication possibilities that were unimaginable a few short years ago but also has made the dissemination of misinformation and disinformation exceedingly easy and deceptive. We will follow one or more current topics in the news from port to port, comparing coverage in both legacy media and non-traditional media to coverage in elite U.S. media. Country to country comparisons will be aimed at gaining insights into how media affects all of our understandings of the world around us.

Media and political systems are always intertwined. The course will examine those relationships and how they affect citizens’ ability to ferret out credible information. We will find places with a relative free press that is under pressure, among other reasons, because the internet and social media have shattered old business models. We also will find places where governments work to control information, leaving citizens to develop resistance or other coping strategies.

To say that the rise of the internet, social media and now artificial intelligence has disrupted media systems is an understatement. This course aims to provide tools for students to understand how this is playing out and influencing what we all come to know about the world — and what can and should be done about it — across a wide swath of the world.