Università Roma Tre

The course aims to explore the history and present of news journalism today, its role in society and in shaping public opinion, against the backdrop of a growing tendency towards manipulation of the news, as well as the role of the publishing market in the drift of journalistic storytelling towards the 'infotainment'.

Stories of of enquiries and investigative journalists in Italy and abroad will be retraced, exploring their role today between limits, growing threats and new opportunities; the contribution to investigations, the selection of sources; interlocutors and research tools on the ground and online, Italian and EU databases, access rights to institutional data (Foia and similar).

We will talk about resources from datajournalism, social media, and the implications of artificial intelligence on content production and consumption, between the digital revolution and the crisis of journalism.

A focus will be devoted to the anomalous role and space reserved to news in Italian news, the function of these editorial choices, between audience and censorship, the comparison with the market and the consumption of information in advanced democracies. We will also analyse investigative journalism and big news in the perspective of our republican history: from the role of the mafias to the 'strategia della tensione', from the omnipresence of the 'Italian mysteries' to the role of memory between newsroom and civil conscience.

Elements will be provided on the communication of public institutions, major private companies and advertisers, the role of press offices, corporate communication and crisis management, up to indirect lobbying.
The interaction of news with religious denominations will be examined (from Vatican information to relations with the Jewish community, Islamic and other associations), as well as the issue of secularism.

The evolution of the right to report news will be covered: Italian ethical documents (minors, hate speech, migration, feminicides, gender equality) and EU regulations, protection of sources and whistleblowing, privacy and information rights, publication of wiretaps and press offences, threats to reporters, as well as some of the tools for verifying and debunking news, in the era of conspiracy and online disinformation.

The workshop will allow students to measure themselves directly with the reconstruction of case studies and the writing of texts for the various media: from the big news to the evolution of breaking news (environmental emergencies, health, terrorism, climate change), up to current affairs pages (mafias, crime, white news and constructive journalism, judiciary, gossip, sport), examining styles, languages and stereotypes.

TOOLS FOR THE REPORTER
Randall, David, The Universal Journalist. London: Plutopress 2000


IN THIS SECTION TWO TITLES TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS:

Beppe Benvenuto- Filippo Maria Battaglia, Il giornalismo d'inchiesta nell'Italia del dopoguerra, Milan, 2008.

Alessandro Barbano, Manuale di giornalismo, Laterza, 2012

Alberto Papuzzi, Professione giornalista. Le tecniche, i media, le regole, Donzelli, Rome 2010 (5ª ed.)

Caterina Malavenda, Le regole dei giornalisti, Il Mulino, Bologna 2012

Sergio Splendore, Giornalismo ibrido: come cambia la cultura giornalistica italiana, Carocci, Rome 2017

Angelo Agostini, Giornalismi. Media e giornalisti in Italia, Il Mulino, Bologna 2012.

(eds.) Marzia Antenore e Sergio Splendore, Datajournalism. Guida essenziale alle notizie fatte coi numeri, Mondadori, Milano 2017

Emilio Albertario- Giuseppe Castellini, La ricostruzione di cronaca giudiziaria nei media, in Archiviopenale.it, n. 2/2012, Pisa University Press (available in pdf among the course materials on Moodle and Teams)
(edited by Davide Bagnoli), La cronaca nera in Italia. Il perché della sua spettacolarizzazione, Temperino Rosso-Edizioni Fortini, Brescia 2016.

Rita Di Giovacchino, Anatomia del caso Cogne, in Delitti Privati, Fazi, Rome 2007, pp.217-420

Emanuele Bellano, Cioccolato amaro, video-investigation, Rai 'Report', 23 October 2017 (available on line: https://www.rai.it/programmi/report/inchieste/Cioccolato-amaro-562322ec-204f-4c79-a9db-5e65f194bbfa.html)


METHODS OF READING FACTS
Leonardo Sciascia, Opere 1971-1983, Bompiani, Milano 1989 (from this book we will read La scomparsa di Majorana, Il teatro della memoria, I pugnalatori)
Leonardo Sciascia, To Each Its Own, NYRB Classics, 2000
Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair, NYRB Classics, 2004
Leonardo Sciascia, Equal Danger, NYRB Classics,
Leonardo Sciascia, The Day of the Owl, NYRB, 2003
Marc Bloch, Reflections of a Historian on the False News of the War (available on line: https://www.miwsr.com/2013/downloads/2013-051.pdf and among the course materials on Moodle or Teams)


THE ITALY CASE (THE ITALIAN EXCEPTION)
IN THIS SECTION ONE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS:
Enrico Deaglio, Il raccolto rosso 1982-2010, Il Saggiatore, Milan 2010
Enrico Deaglio, La bomba. 50 anni di Piazza Fontana, Feltrinelli 2019
Rita Di Giovacchino, Il libro nero della Prima Repubblica, Fazi editore, Rome 2005
Giovanni Vignali, L'uomo nero e le stragi, Paper First, Rome 2021
Giovanni Fasanella-José Cereghino, Le menti del doppio Stato, Chiarelettere, Rome 2020

ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL HISTORY
IN THIS SECTION ONE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS:
Paul Ginsborg, Italy and its discontents : family, civil society, state, 1980-2001, New York : Palgrave/Macmillan., 2003
Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth , Boston: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series., 2018
Francesca Rizzuto, La società dell'orrore. Terrorism and communication in the era of emotional journalism, Pisa University Press 2018
Vanni Codeluppi, La vetrinizzazione sociale. Il processo di spettacolarizzazione degli individui e della società, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2007
Byung-Chul Han, The Expulsion of the Other: Society, Perception and Communication today, Cambridge: Polity Press., 2018

MEDIA
IN THIS SECTION ONE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING PAPERS OR BOOKS:
Mario Morcellini, Digital media absolute sovereigns? How do they affect politics and society, 20 January 2022, in Agendadigitale.eu (available in pdf among the course materials on Moodle and Teams)
Brittany Kaiser, Targeted: The cambridge Analityca Whistleblower’s Inside Story of how Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and how it Can Happen Again, New York: Harper Collins Publishers., 2019
Christian Salmon, Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind, New York: Verso., 2017
Christian Salmon, La tyrannie des bouffons. Sur le pouvoir grotesque, ed. Les liens que libèrent, Paris 2020
Barbara Sgarzi, Social media Journalism, Apogeo, Adria 2016

IDEAS
IN THIS SECTION TWO TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING PAPERS OR BOOKS:
Tiziana Caponio - Teresa Cappiali, The persistent issue of refugees in 'Italian Politics, vol. 32, issue 1, Berghahn Books 2017 (available in pdf among the course materials on Moodle and Teams)
Lilian Thuram, White Thinking: Behind The Mask of Racial Identity, London: Hero Publishers c/o University of Buckingham., 2021
F. Gatti, Bilal. Il mio viaggio clandestino nel mercato dei nuovi schiavi, Milano, 2007
Fabio Deotto, L'altro mondo. La vita in un pianeta che cambia, Bompiani, Milan 2021
Luciano Canfora, Fermare l’odio, Laterza, Bari 2019
Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Establishes Knowledge and Why it Matters, Oxford University Press., 2018
Tom Stafford, Why Bad News Dominates The Headlines, in BBC Future, 29 July 2014 (available online: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140728-why-is-all-the-news-bad)
Bryson Hull, Journalistic objectivity is fiction - and that's just fine, in Center for Digital Ethics & Policy, Loyola University- Chicago IL, 23 January 2017 (available online: http://digitalethics.org/essays/journalistic-objectivity-fiction/ and among the course materials on Moodle and Teams)
Aa.Vv., The future of investigative journalism (3rd Report of Section 2010-12, House of Lords, Select Committee in Communications), HL Paper 256, London, House of Lords, 2012 (available online: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201012/ldselect/ldcomuni/256/25602.htm and among the course materials on Moodle and Teams)


ETHICAL CHARTERS
Testo Unico dei doveri del giornalista: https://www.odg.toscana.it/allegati_leggi/Testo%20unico%20dei%20doveri%20del%20giornalista%20-%202021.pdf
(also available among the course materials on Moodle or Teams)


The Venice Manifesto: how to report on feminicide https://www.lauradebenedetti.it/manifesto-venezia-testo-completo/
(also available among the course materials on Moodle or Teams)