WEB JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA
cod. 1009408

Academic year 2024/25
1° year of course - Second semester
Professor
Paolo FERRANDI
Academic discipline
Sociologia dei processi culturali e comunicativi (SPS/08)
Field
"discipline tecniche dell'informazione e della comunicazione"
Type of training activity
Characterising
30 hours
of face-to-face activities
6 credits
hub: PARMA
course unit
in ITALIAN

Integrated course unit module: THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF JOURNALISM

Learning objectives

Knowledge and understanding: The teaching of Journalism and New Media will allow students to critically analyse the activity – including through new media – of major online newspapers (both mainstream and native) and to learn the basics and leading styles of current journalism. This knowledge will be acquired through targeted teaching tools - lectures, case history, essays, supporting articles and in-depth bibliography - and will be screened with an oral examination test.

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding: the study of journalistic techniques and the main styles used by current and past journalism, even taking into account the techniques of TV and new media, should allow students to learn the practical basis of journalism. This knowledge, together with the practice represented by internships, should confer writing and organising material skills suitable for writing journalistic articles.

Making judgements: At the end of the course, students, based on the theoretical, practical and linguistic knowledge acquired, should have gained the ability to analyze the communication strategies of online newspapers and to make independent judgments.

Communication skills: At the end of the course, students should have achieved the ability to clearly analyze online journalism strategies and be able to argue about them in a scientifically appropriate manner. In addition, if aided by a targeted internship, they should be able to master the main writing styles of journalism and produce journalistically correct articles.

Learning skills: Students should have developed an analytic and methodological ability that can be used in the field in the practice of journalism and be deepened - and expanded - independently, both from further theoretical contributions and through new field data.

Prerequisites

To access the course, I want a basic understanding of the history, genres and language of journalism.

Course unit content

The course will cover the new frontiers of online journalism. In particular, the new journalistic genres (data journalism, explicatory journalism, citizen journalism and more generally the focus on user-generated content) and the new stylistic-formal modes of online journalism, such as live blogging, will be outlined. Part of the course will also cover new ways of disseminating content through social networks, as the homepage of online newspapers is now less and less critical. Particular attention will be given to the theme of "fake news" and its dissemination. Finally, I will try to outline the difficult economic moment of the publishing world still looking for a valid business model for online, while the old paper-based model is at the end of the life cycle. Part of the course will, of course, also cover the general theoretical framework on journalism and new media.

Full programme

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Bibliography

For now, I will only provide a text that will be used for the general part and that will in any case be integrated.

Sergio Bolzoni: "Digital Journalism", Utet Università, Turin, 2015.

• Section 1 all apart from paragraph 4.9 (Small digital glossary for journalists)

• Section 2 all apart from paragraph 8.6 (the photo and copyright on the web); 8.7 (Creative Commons licenses); 9.6 (we create a YouTube channel); 9.7 (Standard YouTube license against Creative Commons); Chapter 12 (Everyone's journalism: the blog); Chapter 13.6 (Yoast: the WordPress Seo plugin)

• Section 3 can be left out

For the monographic part - given the dynamic nature of the transformations in progress - I will provide some texts - just before and during the lessons.

The bibliography will also be published on Elly and the course blog: http://giornalismoparma.typepad.com/teoria_e_tecniche_del_lin/

Teaching methods

Teaching consists of frontal lessons with the use of multimedia tools. This year, probably, due to the pandemic, the course will be carried out in mixed mode, with live lectures and with the possibility of having the lessons streamed and recorded on the Elly platform.

To encourage student workers (who always have attendance problems), I will activate, as every year, a site - http://giornalismoparma.typepad.com/teoria_e_tecniche_del_lin/ - with the summary of my lessons and in-depth material.

Besides - this a course in blended mode - on Elly you will find the synthesis of my lessons in written form.

Assessment methods and criteria

The examination consists of an oral interview not only notional but attentive to the connections between one topic and another. The student's ability to make the issues presented in the lesson will be evaluated. As it is a part of a course consisting of two modules held by two different teachers, the final grade will be given by the average of the rates obtained in the two exams. For the final vote, the two examination tests must be completed.

Other information

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2030 agenda goals for sustainable development

Contacts

Toll-free number

800 904 084

Student registry office

E. segreteria.corsiumanistici@unipr.it 

Quality assurance office

Education manger:
Dott.ssa Valentina Galeotti
T. +39 0521 034133
Office E. dusic.giornalismo@unipr 
Manager E. valentina.galeotti@unipr

President of the degree course

Prof. Marco Deriu
E. marco.deriu@unipr.it

Faculty advisor

Prof. Matteo Truffelli
E. matteo.truffelli@unipr.it 

Career guidance delegate

Prof.ssa Laura Gherardi
E. laura.gherardi@unipr.it

Tutor Professors

Prof. Matteo Truffelli
E. matteo.truffelli@unipr.it 

Prof. Marco Deriu
E. marco.deriu@unipr.it 

Erasmus delegates

Prof. Paola Volpini
E. paola.volpini@unipr.it 
 

Quality assurance manager

Prof. Matteo Truffelli
E. matteo.truffelli@unipr.it

Internships

Prof.ssa Sabrina Tosi Cambini
E. sabrina.tosicambini@unipr.it

Tutor students

Alberto NEGRI 

E. viola.tamani@studenti.unipr.it