The successful student achieves an understanding of analytical tools in the discipline of media studies and applies them in reading, analysing, and reporting on print and electronic media texts. Framing, agenda-setting, gatekeepership and status conferral are among the media roles examined. S/he compares media texts originating from different countries (including the Netherlands) and the social and political role of media in those countries to analyse how a text needs to adapt as it crosses cultural borders (for instance via the wire services) to achieve impact and intelligibility in the target culture. S/he writes and edits various genres of media texts in English to publication standards, perfecting already highly advanced English writing, up to and beyond effective operational proficiency (CEFR C1) toward mastery (CEFR C2).

 

This course examines the encoding and decoding of print and online media texts in the Anglophone world, with special but not exclusive reference to the UK and USA. It addresses descriptive, discursive and tendentious news, press practice and readership expectations. It uses various hermeneutics to understand these phenomena in terms of ideology and power. In practice-based research, students learn to write publishable English texts in the ostensibly balanced/objective genres, academic essays, news reports and features plus the overtly opinionated genres of leading articles/editorials, columns and reviews. Participants are required to attend cultural events at their own expense, contact subjects and arrange interviews, buy occasional copies of international newspapers and follow the news daily.


This course is the third course in specialization Cultural Encounters.