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.

1. TOOLS FOR THE REPORTER

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

2. CRIME NEWS / IN THIS SECTION A VOLUME TO BE CHOSEN FROM:
(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. Terrorism and communication in the age of emotional journalism, Pisa University Press 2018 (also available in e-book, e.g. in the Libraries of Rome network https://www.bibliotechediroma.it/opac/resource/la-societa-dellorrore-terrorismo-e-comunicazione-nellera-del-giornalismo-emotivo/ML_0000150254086?tabDoc=tabcata )

3. THE ITALIAN EXCEPTION / IN THIS SECTION ONE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES:

Enrico Deaglio, Il raccolto rosso 1982-2010, Il Saggiatore, Milan 2010

Enrico Deaglio, La bomba. 50 anni da 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. Italy 1992-2022, Laterza, Bari 2022

4. SOCIAL HISTOTY / IN THIS SECTION ONE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES:
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

Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, Stanford University Press, 2015

5. MEDIA /
IN THIS SECTION ONE TO CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING PAPERS OR BOOKS:
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

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

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

6. IDEAS / IN THIS SECTION ONE OF YOUR CHOICE FROM THE FOLLOWING PAPERS OR VOLUMES:
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

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

Anna Foa, Gli ebrei in Italia. I primi 2000 anni, Laterza, Bari 2022

Samir Kassir, Being Arab, London-New York City: Verso Books., 2006

François Jullien, On the Universal: The Uniform, the Common and Dialogue between Cultures, Polity Publisher, University of Cambridge, 2016

François Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking, University of Hawaii, 2004

7. ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM /

Naomi Oreskes-Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt, London: Bloomsbury Press., 2010

8. ETHICAL CHARTERS

Testo Unico dei doveri del giornalista: https://www.odg.it/testo-unico-dei-doveri-del-giornalista/24288

Il Manifesto di Venezia: come raccontare il femminicidio: https://www.sindacatogiornalistiveneto.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/MANIFESTO-DI-VENEZIA.pdf


9. METHODS OF READING FACTS
Some novels by Leonardo Sciascia and a short essay by Marc Bloch will be read during the workshop:
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)