Course 2024-2025 a.y.

Built on a solid theoretical/critical basis mostly linked to cultural studies, sociology and political journalism theories and structured in a continuous now-and-then analysis of political events media coverage, the course focuses on three main perspectives linked with some families of US political events whose coverage have set the television events paradigms and the relation between politics and medium through the years: 

• Television and democracy: the 1960 Kennedy and Nixon election campaigns, with a peculiar attention to their first historical debate analyzed in parallel with the ones held in 2024 between Biden and Trump
• Television and trauma narration: the 1963 Kennedy assassination in Dallas and the following few days in parallel with the 2021 January 6th attack on Capitol Hill
• Television and public opinion: the 1972 Watergate scandal and the 1977 Frost/Nixon interviews, in parallel with the ongoing agenda setting acted in the 2024 election

The media coverage of the 2024 U.S. Presidential campaign and election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be extensively processed by the course and its class activities, especially with:

• An on-going, day-by-day, in-class analysis and debate about the most important campaign media issues
• A weekly podcast realized by a newsroom of volunteer students (not compulsory activity, coordinated by the professor and the teaching assistant) that will summerize, illustrate and explain in a critical way the most important election related media events of the week
• A series of nightlong in-presence live events in the occasion of the September presidential debate and the November election night held by teacher and students with the participation of guests (media experts, professors, journalists).

• Identify and illustrate the complexity of television communication spectrum.
• Define and summarize the historical and actual role of television in societies.
• Explore and explain the relation between television and audiences, politics, cultures.

• Analyze and understand the ideological and symbolic architecture of television.
• Evaluate the past and the actual social dimension of the medium, and foresee any possible development.
• Prepare the student to become a television professional with a full awarness of the potentialities of the medium and a full consciousness of the social and civil responsabilities involved in the cultural production.

• Lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Individual works / Assignments
• Collaborative Works / Assignments
• Interaction/Gamification

The teaching style is characterized by the regular screening of audiovisual materials and a strong, continuous, meaning-creation oriented interaction between teacher-students. In addition to this:

• Guest speakers will provide a different (broader, narrower or lateral) perspectives on the course topics
• Case studies will be analysed and discussed through interactive orgnized class activities (e.g. workshop)
• Individual assignments (for attending students) will provide students the possibility to develop and express their own critical skills
• Collaborative works (in the form of the non-compulsory activity of the weekly podcast) will offer an insight perspective on media events coverage
• Interaction, in any form, is one of the pillar of the class activities, and students' contributes to the collective meaning creation are important for the success of the course and they could guide it to new, unexpected, welcomed didactical path.

• Individual assignment: a 2-pages critical essay - delivered some weeks before the exam - about one of the topics discussed in class choosen by the student, in order to evaluate capabilities in: 
  • Evaluate the past and the actual social dimension of the medium, and foresee any possible development
  • Analyze and understand the ideological and symbolic architecture of television.
• Oral individual exam about the course topics. The exam is designed to evaluate student capabilities in:
  • Identify and illustrate the complexity of television communication spectrum
  • Define and summarize the historical and actual role of television in societies
  • Explore and explain the relation between television and audiences, politics, cultures

• A final, oral exam about two books (more detailed aspects are included in the syllabus). It's designed to evaluate candidate capabilities in:
  • Identify and illustrate the complexity of television communication spectrum
  • Define and summarize the historical and actual role of television in societies
  • Explore and explain the relation between television and audiences, politics, cultures

Slides, personal notes and a bibliography as indicated in the syllabus at the beginning of the course.

Bibliography is indicated in the syllabus at the beginning of the course.