New(s) Media

This is a graduate seminar/studio course in which we will explore the role of new media technologies (especially software-based technologies) in the production, distribution, and reception of the news. The focus this term will be on international news. We will consider macro and micro phenomena which influence the form and content of the news and we will consider how new media technologies can or do amplify, transform or counter the powers of these phenomena. Phenomena to be covered include the influences of ownership of the media, legislation concerning the media, geography, race, religion, language, ideology, story format, news sources, editing, and history. Each week will be devoted to a different macro or micro influence on the form, content, distribution, or reception of the news. Students will be assigned a series of design and analysis exercises in which they will be asked to examine or propose how new media technologies can be designed to improve the quality, quantity and presentation of news and information. We will be especially concerned with existing and proposed software technologies to search, sort, cluster, archive, present, edit, and author the news. Readings will be drawn from humanities and social science works of media studies and also from the technical literatures of information retrieval, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, and multimedia.