Description

– The first mode of assessment is a theoretically informed discussion of a news item. This project aims to assess your analytical skills and your ability to evaluate the applicability of the theories discussed in this module.
– The news item can be a recent news story from a newspaper or a news website; a news video; a magazine feature. In your discussion, you should explain which journalism practices you think were used in the production of the selected news item and why. Your argument should be supported with relevant theories from the literature. Below are some examples of how you can approach the news item:
-> Discuss the news values through which the events in the story were presented and how objective the story seemed.
-> Discuss the source used in the story and explain why some sources may have had greater influence on journalists than others.
-> In a story about a war / conflict, explain the process through which the information may have been controlled.
-> Explain the process through which the image of a criminal may have been created in a given news story.
-> Discuss the professional news practices and the exogenous factors that may have shaped a sports news story.
-> In a magazine story, explain how different the construction of its content could be to the construction of a newspaper story.

NOTE: This list of examples is intended to give you direction and is not exhaustive