Mass Media and Culture: British and American Mass Media

Prof. Dr. Madeleine Danova
Lectures: 45
ECTS: 4

The aim of the course is to help students gain deeper insight into the way the mass media in the UK and the USA work. The course is designed to help students become aware of some of the specific problems the mass media and society encounter in the age of electronically delivered information. The first part of the course focuses on some of the most important issues in this field such as private and public media, media regulating institutions, censorship, editorial standards, media ethics, democracy and media. Special attention is paid to the problems surrounding the use and the function of the Internet.
The second part of the course is devoted to the discussion of the various cultural theories, which can be used in elucidating the nature and the role of the mass media in contemporary society. Particular attention is paid to the theories of  “culture industry,” “information society,” “global village.” Finally, the electronically delivered information is discussed as a new mode of information and a new kind of language which determines the various pictures contemporary cultural theories paint of society – “the hyper-real world” of Baudrillard, the “total surveillance” of Foucault’s Panopticum, the world of electronic writing of Derrida, the postmodern computerized world of Lyotard.

Assessment:
– Class participation: 25%
– Assignments: 25%
– Term project: 50 %