Università Roma Tre

The course aims to examine the history and present of news journalism today, its role in shaping public opinion, against the backdrop of a publishing market in crisis, more exposed to the pressures of audience and journalistic storytelling, in the name of infotainment.

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

We will discuss 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 space reserved for news in Italian news, the function of these editorial choices, between audience and censorship, and the comparison with the choices and consumption of information in other 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 strategy of tension and the 'Italian mysteries', with the emphasis on 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 (from Vatican information to relations with the Jewish community, Islamic associations and other cults) will be examined, as well as the issue of secularism.
The evolution of the right to report news will be retraced: Italian deontological 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, to test conspiracy and disinformation online.

The workshop will have the students directly measure themselves with reconstruction of case studies and with the writing of texts intended 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 and constructive journalism, judicial, gossip, sport), examining styles, languages and stereotypes.

TOOLS FOR THE REPORTER

Randall, David, The Universal Journalist. London: Plutopress 2000



IN THIS SECTION ONE TITLE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS:

Alessandro Barbano, Manuale di giornalismo, Laterza, 2012

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

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

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

(edited by Davide Bagnoli), La cronaca nera in Italia. Il perché della sua spettacolarizzazione, Temperino Rosso-Edizioni Fortini, Brescia 2016.

Francesca Rizzuto, La società dell'orrore. Terrorismo e comuicazione nell’età del giornalismo emotivo, Pisa University Press 2018 (also available in e-book, e.g. in the Biblioteche di Roma network https://www.bibliotechediroma.it/opac/resource/la-societa-dellorrore-terrorismo-e-comunicazione-nellera-del-giornalismo-emotivo/ML_0000150254086?tabDoc=tabcata )



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 TWO TITLES 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

Giovanni Tizian, Il silenzio. Italia 1992-2022, Laterza, Bari 2022



ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL HISTORY

IN THIS SECTION ONE TITLE 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

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

Byung-Chul Han, Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022



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



IDEAS /

IN THIS SECTION ONE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING PAPERS OR BOOKS:

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)


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)