Week 8: Public spheres/Social powers




What is Schudson's point about the story of candidate Larry Agran, who ran for President in 1992? Does Schudson think this is a typical illustration of media power? Why, and to what extent, does Schudson argue that there can be "an illusion of power" in the media? What is the hypodermic model? What are its limitations? What is culture, and what is the cultural model of media effects? How is it different from the hypodermic model? What are some ways culture might influence events? What are the differences between looking at news as information and news as amplifier? What does Schudson mean by "moral amplification" and "moral organization"? What does he mean by the "public aura" of news and how is it important?

In what ways is the subjectivity of news "patterned and predictable"? Does Schudson think most news bias or framing is intentional? What are frames in media? Does Schudson think they can be avoided? How does Schudson criticize Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's writings about news? On what topics does he think they are generally correct? On what topics does he think right wing critics of the media have good points? How does Schudson analyze professionalism in the news? Why does he say, "professionalism is as likely to be the disease as the cure"? What is "the eventfulness of news"? Why does he call professional journalism "event-centered, negative, detached, technical, and official"? How does Schudson explain the press's very limited coverage of Ralph Nader's run for President in 2002?

What is the history and meaning of "the bourgeois public sphere"? Why is it of interest today? Why is the nation an "imagined community," and what role has the news played in its creation and maintenance? What is the difference between "a community" and "a public"? What were colonial era newspapers like? Did newspapers take sides in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras? What is the significance of Thomas Paine's Common Sense in the history of the news? Did newspapers try to stay neutral or objective during these eras? What did the penny press bring to American journalism? What innovations did Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst bring to American journalism? When did objectivity become a news ideal in the U.S., and why? What are parajournalists, and when did they appear on the scene? At what point in American history did most journalists consider themselves "committed professionals, not political partisans"? How was this self-image troubled by events of the 1960s? How did the Vietnam War change journalist's approach to government officials?

[Research Proposals Due 3/16]