Professor Charlie Beckett

This course is available on the MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society), MSc in Media and Communications (Research) and MSc in Politics and Communication. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is 'controlled access', meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted. If the course is oversubscribed, priority will be given to students with the course listed on their Programme Regulations.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students should apply via LSE for You without submitting a statement.

Please do not email the teacher with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place.

The news media is vital not just for the dissemination information but as a forum for debate. Journalism shapes our individual and community lives. It frames ideological disputes and is a site of contestation. But journalism and the news itself is changing because of technological, social, economic and political forces.  This course led by a media professor with 20 years of experience as a journalist, takes an ethical perspective on media change. It asks what impact journalism has, what kind of journalism do we want, and how will journalism reconstruct itself according to competing national, cultural, or political contexts. On completion of this course, students should be able to: understand the role of journalism in society today; critically discuss different theoretical conceptions of journalism as practiced in a wide variety of social and political contexts; compare and contrast the role of journalism in contexts ranging from mainstream to alternative media outlets; evaluate the normative and empirical connections between media journalism, the production of news and ethical considerations; critically assess contemporary debates about the changing nature of journalism and its implications for cultural understanding and democracy.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the AT.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

All students are expected to complete advance reading, prepare seminar presentations, and submit one essay of 1500 words.

• Beckett, C. (2008) Supermedia, London: Blackwell.
• Bell, E. & Owen, T. (2017) The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Re-engineered Journalism. Tow Center, Columbia University.
• Boczkowski, P. and Anderson, C.W, Eds (2017) Remaking The News. MIT Press.
• Bruns, A .(2019) Are Filter Bubbles Real? Polity.
• Chouliaraki, L. (2006) Spectatorship of Suffering, London: Sage.
• Diakopoulos, N. (2019) Automating the News. Harvard University Press.
• Muhlmann, G. (2008) A Political History of Journalism, Cambridge: Polity.
• Schudson, M. (2008) Why Democracies Need An Unlovable Press. Polity.
• Silverstone, R. (2006) Media and Morality: On the rise of the Mediapolis. Cambridge: Polity.
• Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2019) Emotions, Media and Politics. Polity.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the WT.