每周課程進度與作業要求 Course Schedule & Requirements

Week 1: News and journalism in Taiwanese society and in other (democratic) societies around the world

Before the first class, please finish the required readings and consider the following questions:

1. What are you concerned about news, and why?
2. How would you define news and journalism?
3. How should we approach news and journalism?

Required readings

• Newman, N., Arguedas, A. R., Robertson, C. T., Nielsen, R. K. & Fletcher, R. (2025). Reuters Institute digital news report 2025. Oxford, UK: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/Digital_News-Report_2025.pdf

Please read the Executive Summary and Key Findings (p. 9-31) in addition to the analysis of your home country.

Optional readings

• Curran, J. (2011). Chapter 3: Media system, public knowledge and democracy: A comparative study. In J. Curran (Ed.), Media and democracy (pp.47-60). Oxford; New York: Routledge.
• Gans, H. (2003). Democracy and the news. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Mancini, P. (2000). Political complexity and alternative models of journalism: The Italian case. In J. Curran, & M. J. Park (Eds.), De-westernizing media studies (pp.234-246). London: Routledge.
• Pickard, V. (2019). Democracy without journalism? Confronting the misinformation society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Week 2: News media and citizenship: The era of mass media

The mass media such as newspapers, radio, and television still have a strong presence in contemporary media landscape, so we will discuss how mass media continue to play a role in shaping public opinion and consider how their adaptation to the digital environment might have transformed certain journalistic and civic practices.

Required readings

• Lee, W. C. (2011). Mediated politics in Taiwan: Political talk shows and democracy. Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 7(2), 49-67.
• Leiner, D. J., & Neuendorf, N. L. (2022). Does streaming TV change our concept of television? Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media,, 66(1), 53-175.

Optional readings

• Bennett, W. L. (2016). News: The politics of illusion (10^th ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Druckman, J. N. (2003). The power of television images: The first Kennedy-Nixon debate revisited. The Journal of Politics, 65(2), 559-571.
• Entman, R. M., & Herbst, S. (2001). Chapter 10: Reframing public opinion as we have known it. In W. L. Bennett, & R. M. Entman (Eds.), Mediated politics: Communication in the future of democracy (pp.203-225). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lin, Y. H. (2004). Chapter 3: The changing meaning of ‘news’ in local academic history (第三章：本土學術史的「新聞」概念流變). In S. C. Weng (Ed.), Imaginaries of the discipline of communications in Taiwan (pp.55-84). Taipei: Chuliu Publisher.

Week 3: News media and citizenship: The era of digital media (I)

In this lecture, we will discuss the places of so-called new media in general and of search engines in particular in contemporary news landscape. We will also examine how news audiences from different national contexts, civic/political cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds engage with news in similar or different ways. In doing so, we will reflect on the meaning of news value and the issue of trust in relation to technological and political developments.

Required readings

• Fagerjord, A. (2010). After convergence: YouTube and remix culture. In J. Hunsinger, L. Klastrup, & M. Allen (Eds.), International handbook of Internet research (pp.187-200). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Jenkins, H. (2004). The cultural logic of media convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1), 33-43.
• Tripodi, F. B. (2018). Googling for truth. In F. B. Tripodi (Ed.),
  Searching for alternative facts: Analyzing scriptural inference in conservative news practices (pp.27-34). New York: Data & Society Research Institute. https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Data_Society_Searching-for-Alternative-Facts.pdf

Optional readings

• Kenney, M., Rouvinen, P., & Zysman, J. (2015). The digital disruption and its societal impacts. Journal of Industrial Competition and Trade, 15, 1-4.
• Lunt, P., Kaun, A., Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, P., Stark, B., & van Zoonen, L. (2014). Chapter 9: The mediation of civic participation: Diverse forms of political agency in a multimedia age. In N. Carpentier, K. Schrøder, & L. Hallett (Eds.), Audience transformations: Shifting audience positions in late modernity (pp.142-156). New York: Routledge.
• Tong, J. R., & Lo, S. H. (Eds.). (2017). Digital technology and journalism: An international comparative perspective. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Tripodi, F. B. (2022). The propagandists' playbook How conservative elites manipulate search and threaten democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Week 4: News media and citizenship: The era of digital media (II)

This lecture will examine the role of social media platforms in shaping journalistic practices, public culture, and democratic citizenship. It will also invite students to consider how data and algorithms mediate both news ‘audiencing’ and production. This discussion will therefore involve an active and critical reflection on political ramifications that algorithms and (big) data have for democracy.

Required readings

• Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’. New Media & Society, 12(3), 347-364.
• Gillespie, T. (2014). Chapter 9: The relevance of algorithms. In T. Gillespie, P. J. Boczkowski, & K. A. Foot (Eds.), Media technologies: Essays on communication, materiality, and society (pp.167-193). Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Papachariss, Z. (2016). Affective publics and structures of storytelling: Sentiment, events and mediality. Information, Communication & Society,, 19(3), 307-324.

Optional readings

• boyd, D. (2011). Chapter 2: Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.),
  A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp.39-58). London: Routledge.
• Bucher, T. (2017). The algorithmic imaginary: Exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 30-44.
• Bucher, T. (2021). Facebook. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2018). YouTube: Online video and participatory culture (2^nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). Instagram: Visual social media cultures. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• McGuigan, L. (2019). Automating the audience commodity: The unacknowledged ancestry of programmatic advertising. New Media & Society, 21(11), 2366-2385.
• Murthy, D. (2013). Twitter: Social communication in the Twitter age (2^nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Pasquale, F. (2015). The black box society: The secret algorithms that control money and information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Rogers, R. (2023). Algorithmic probing: Prompting offensive Google results and their moderation. Big Data & Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231176228
• van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & De Waal, M. (2018). The platform society: Public values in a connective world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wu, S. Y. (2022). An Asian version of data journalism?: Uncovering “Asian values” in data stories produced across Asia. Journalism. DOI: 10.1177/14648849221133298

Week 5: News media and citizenship: The era of AI

Considering many discussions on the power of AI accompanying an unprecedented popularity of ChatGPT, this lecture will investigate the situated and contested nature of our engagement with AI, discussing the issue of news credibility, and reflecting on the relationship between AI developments, (public) knowledge production, and democratic citizenship.

Required readings

• Lee, S., Nah, S., Chung, D. S., & Kim, J. (2020). Predicting AI news credibility: Communicative or social capital or both? Communication Studies, 71(3), 428-447.
• Perrotta, C., Selwyn, N., & Ewin, C. (2024). Artificial intelligence and the affective labour of understanding: The intimate moderation of a language model. New Media & Society, 26(3), 1585-1609.

Optional readings

• Bunz, M., & Braghieri, M. (2022). The AI doctor will see you now: Assessing the framing of AI in news coverage. AI & Society, 37, 9-22.
• Lee, J., & Shin, S. Y. (2022). Something that they never said: Multimodal disinformation and source vividness in understanding the power of AI-enabled deepfake news. Media Psychology, 25(4), 531-546.
• Marconi, F. (2020). Newsmakers: Artificial intelligence and the future of journalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Mitchell, M. (2019). Artificial intelligence: A guide for thinking humans. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Natale, S. (2021). Deceitful media: Artificial intelligence and social life after the Turing test. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Thorne, S. (2020). Hey Siri, tell me a story: Digital storytelling and AI authorship. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 26(4), 808-823.

Week 6: News media and digital communications: Election

Our discussions will address questions such as ‘How do voters use Facebook to get electoral news?’ ‘How could citizens under the voting age be involved in election debates?’ ‘What role do social media influencers play in elections?’ ‘In what ways have digital media shaped contemporary production of electoral coverage?’ ‘How do journalists and their news organisations engage with digital media in covering elections, and why?’ In addition to voters, journalists, and news organisations, political parties and politicians have been utilising digital media to run electoral campaigns and to create their own narratives about elections. We will discuss how politicians engage with digital media, reflecting on potential repercussions for democracy such as the issues of foreign influence campaigns and surveillance capitalism – regarding the former, we will also consider ‘China factor’ specifically in relation to (dis)information operations.

Required readings

• Taras, D. (2022). Chapter 1: How digital media has changed elections: An introduction. In D. Taras, & R. Davis (Eds.), Electoral campaigns, media, and the new world of digital politics (pp.1-22). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2019). Chapter 7: The emotional architecture of social media. In K. Wahl-Jorgensen (Ed.), Emotions, media and politics (pp.147-165). Cambridge, UK; Medford, MA.: Polity.
• Yang, Kenneth C. C. & Kang, Y. W. (2021). Livestreaming influencers, influence types, and political participation: A case study of Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election. Asiascape: Digital Asia, 8(1-2), 92-118.

Optional readings

• Bastos, M., & Farkas, J. (2019). "Donald Trump is my president!": The Internet Research Agency propaganda machine. Social Media + Society, 5(3), 1-13.
• Benkler. Y., Faris, R., & Roberts, H. (2018). Network propaganda: Manipulation, disinformation, and radicalization in American politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Bennett, W. L., & Livingston, S. (2021). Chapter 1: A brief history of the disinformation age: Information wars and the decline of institutional authority. In W. L. Bennett & S. Livingston (Eds.), The disinformation age: Politics, technology, and disruptive communication in the United States (pp.3-40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Cushion, S., & Thomas, R. (2018). Reporting elections: Rethinking the logic of campaign coverage. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Han, R. (2015). Defending the authoritarian regime online: China's “voluntary fifty-cent army”. The China Quarterly, 224, 1006-1025.
• Hu, M. (2020). Cambridge Analytica’s black box. Big Data & Society, 7(2), 1-6.
• Huang, J. N. (2017). The China factor in Taiwan’s media: Outsourcing Chinese censorship abroad. China Perspectives, 3, 27-36.
• Hung, T. C., & Hung, T. W. (2020). How China’s cognitive warfare works: A frontline perspective of Taiwan’s anti-disinformation wars. Journal of Global Security Studies, 7(4), 1-18.
• Iyengar, S. (2018). Media politics: A citizen's guide (4^th ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
• Keane, M., & Yu, H. Q. (2019). A digital empire in the making: China’s outbound digital platforms. International Journal of Communication, 13, 4624-4641.
• Kerman, H., & Rasoul, F. (2022). Protesting is not everything: Analyzing Twitter use during electoral events in non-democratic contexts. Journal of Digital Social Research, 4(4), 22-51.
• Kiyohara, S. (2018). Chapter 3: Comparing institutional factors that influence Internet campaigning in the US, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In S. Kiyohara, K. Maeshima, & D. Owen. (Eds.), Internet election campaigns in the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (pp.55-78). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Krafft, P. M., & Donovan, J. (2020). Disinformation by design: The use of evidence collages and platform filtering in a media manipulation campaign. Political Communication,, 37(2), 194-214.
• Kreiss, D., Lawrence, R. G., & McGregor, S. C. (2020). Political identity ownership: Symbolic contests to represent members of the public. Social Media + Society, 6(2), 1-5.
• Lin, Luc C. S. (2016). Convergence in election campaigns: The frame contest between Facebook and mass media. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 22(2), 199-214.
• Monaco. N. J. (2018). Chapter 5: Taiwan: Digital democracy meets automated autocracy. In S. C. Woolley, & P. N. Howard (Eds.), Computational propaganda: Political parties, politicians, and political manipulation on social media (pp.104-127). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ong, J., & Cabanes, J. (2019). When disinformation studies meets production studies: Social identities and moral justifications in the political trolling industry. International Journal of Communication, 13(20), 5771-5790.
• Parmelee, J. H., Perkins S. C., & Beasley, B. (2023). Personalization of politicians on Instagram: What Generation Z wants to see in political posts. Information, Communication & Society, 26(9), 1773-1788.

Week 7: Midterm presentations (I)

Week 8: Midterm presentations (II)

Week 9: Essay writing and submission

Week 10: News media and digital communications: War (I)

In this lecture, we will consider the construction, development, and deployment of war narratives about the ongoing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since these narratives increasingly take place on digital platforms, be it social networking sites or instant messaging apps, we will further reflect on the role of digital media in shaping war narratives. For example, we will discuss how the technology of livestreaming and the affordance of immediacy might contribute to people’s perception of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Required readings

• Bolin, G., & Ståhlberg, P. (2023). Chapter 1: Contentious concepts. In G. Bolin, & P. Ståhlberg, Managing meaning in Ukraine: Information, communication, and narration since the Euromaidan revolution (pp.19-45). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Hoskins, A., & Shchelin, P. (2023). The war feed: Digital war in plain sight. American Behavioral Scientist, 67(3), 449-463.
• Primig, F., Szabó, H. D. & Lacasa, P. (2023). Remixing war: An analysis of the reimagination of the Russian-Ukraine war on TikTok. Frontiers in Political Science, 5(1). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2023.1085149/full

Optional readings

• Baysha, O. (2023). War, peace, and populist discourse in Ukraine. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Hauter, J. (2023). Forensic conflict studies: Making sense of war in the social media age. Media, War & Conflict, 16(2), 153-172.
• Hung, C. F. (2022). The Russian-Ukraine war and the Chinese propaganda machine: Evidence from "The Great Translation Movement" on Twitter. Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal, 8(3), 401-435.
• Makhortykh, M., & Bastian, M. (2022). Personalizing the war: Perspectives for the adoption of news recommendation algorithms in the media coverage of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Media, War & Conflict, 15(1), 25-45.
• Pantti, M. (Ed.). (2016). Media and the Ukraine crisis: Hybrid media practices and narratives of conflict. New York. NY: Peter Lang.
• Tashchenko, A. (2022, 25 August). Something not skin-deep: Visualised cultural values in the images of wartime. Media@LSE. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2022/08/25/something-not-skin-deep-visualised-cultural-values-in-the-images-of-wartime/

Week 11: News media and digital communications: War (II)

The role of digital media in shaping war narratives is not limited to the present but extends to the past and even the future. By focusing on wars involving Asian countries and territories, specifically China and Taiwan, we will investigate how citizens mobilise narratives of the past to envisage the future, and discuss how digital media contribute to these meaning-making processes.

Required readings

• Huang, J. N. (2020). China’s influence on Taiwan’s media: A model of transnational diffusion of Chinese censorship. In C. H. Fong, J. M. Wu, & A. J. Nathan (Eds.) China's influence and the centre-periphery tug of war in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific (pp.205-223). Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge.
• Lin, W. P. (2021). Chapter 6: Online war memory. In W. P. Lin, Island fantasia: Imagining subjects on the military frontline between China and Taiwan (pp.140-166). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Morris-Suzuki, T. (2005). Chapter 1: The past is not dead. In T. Morris-Suzuki, The past within us: Media, memory, history (pp.1-32). London; New York: Verso.

Optional readings

• Colley, T. (2019). Chapter 8: Looking into the future. In T. Colley, Always at war: British public narratives of war (pp.186-204). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Hogervorst, S. (2019). Chapter 12: Digital survival? Online interview portals and the re-contextualization of holocaust testimonies. In N. Adler, R. Ensel, & M. Wintle (Eds.), Narratives of war: Remembering and chronicling battle in twentieth-century Europe (pp.116-126). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Hung, T. C., & Hung, T. W. (2020). How China’s cognitive warfare works: A frontline perspective of Taiwan’s anti-disinformation wars. Journal of Global Security Studies, 7(4), 1-18.
• Huyssen, A. (2001). Present pasts: Media, politics, amnesia. In A. Appadurai. (Ed.), Globalization (pp.57-77). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Li, W. P. (2024, 18 March). The imagined American Civil War -- How was the disinformation about the Texas border standoff started, escalated, and amplified by Russian, Chinese, and Taiwanese propagators?. https://tfc-taiwan.org.tw/articles/10398
• Lo, S. H. (2002). Diaspora regime into nation: Mediating hybrid nationhood in Taiwan. Javnost - The Public, 9(1), 65-83.
• Louzon, V. (2020). Chapter 3: Colonial legacies, war memories, and political violence in Taiwan, 1945-1947. In B. Kushner, & A. Levidis. (Eds.), In the ruins of the Japanese empire: Imperial violence, state destruction, and the reordering of modern East Asia (pp.76-97). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
• van Dijck, J. (2007). Mediated memories in the digital age. New York, NY: Routledge. Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press.
• Vickers, E. (2007). Chapter 9: Frontiers of memory: Conflict, imperialism, and official histories in the formation of post-Cold War Taiwan identity. In S. M. Jager, & R. Mitter. (Eds.), Ruptured histories: War, memory, and the post-Cold War in Asia (pp. 209-232). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Wang, H. L. (2014). Comparison for com-passion: Exploring the structures of feeling in East Asia. In P. H. Liao, & S. M. Shih (Eds.), Comparatizing Taiwan (pp.59-79). London; New York: Routledge.

Week 12: News media and digital communications: War (III)

Built upon our previous discussion on war narratives, we will further consider the role of the news media in legitimising armed conflicts and associated risks. We will also unravel the complexities of audience reception of news about distant wars and suffering, especially through making a distinction between seeing and witnessing.

Required readings

• Allan, S., & Matheson, D. (2013). Chapter 10: War reporting in a digital age. In K. Orton-Johnson, & N. Prior (Eds.), Digital sociology: Critical perspectives (pp.151-164). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Kyriakidou, M. (2015). Media witnessing: Exploring the audience of distant suffering. Media, Culture & Society, 37(2), 215-231.
• Silverstone, R. (2007). Chapter 2: Mediapolis or the Space of Appearance. In R. Silverstone (Ed.), Media and morality: On the rise of the mediapolis (pp.25-55) Cambridge; Malden, MA.: Polity.

Optional readings

• Bennett, D. (2013). Digital media and reporting conflict: Blogging and the BBC's coverage of war and terrorism. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Burston, J. (2003). Chapter 11: War and the entertainment industries: New research priorities in an era of cyber-patriotism. In D. K. Thussu, & D. Freedman (Eds.), War and the media: Reporting conflict 24/7 (pp.163-175). London: SAGE.
• Chouliaraki, L. (2011). ‘Improper distance’: Towards a critical account of solidarity as irony. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(4), 363-381. 
• Gregory, S. (2017). Chapter 13: Human rights in an age of distant witnesses: Remixed lives, reincarnated images and live-streamed co-presence. In J. Eder, & C. Klonk (Eds.), Image operations: Visual media and political conflict (pp.184-196). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Guo, L., Chen, Y. N. Katherine, Vu, H., Wang, Q., Aksamit, R., Guzek, D., Jachimowski, M., & McCombs, M. (2015). Coverage of the Iraq War in the United States, Mainland China, Taiwan and Poland: A transnational network agenda-setting study. Journalism Studies, 16(3), 343-362.
• Jones, S. (2021). Chapter 8: It’s not just about empathy: Going beyond the empathy machine in immersive journalism. In T. Uskali, A. Gynnild, S. Jones, & E. Sirkkunen (Eds.), Immersive journalism as storytelling: Ethics, production, and design (pp.82-95). Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis.
• Orgad, S. (2011). Proper distance from ourselves: The potential for estrangement in the mediapolis. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(4), 401-421. 

Week 13: Digital media ethics

We will end with a debate about what our relationship with digital media should be. In doing so, we will be critical of both frenzy and panic over the impact of digital media on modern society, thereby having a better idea of how we ought to take the opportunities and risks accompanying the rapid developments of information and communication technologies.

Required readings

• Milner, R. & Phillips, W. (2021). Cultivating ecological literacy. In W. Phillips and R. Milner (Eds.) You are here: A field guide for navigating polarized speech, conspiracy theories and our polluted information landscape (pp. 149-180). Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Vos, T. P. (2022). Chapter 7: Social roles of journalism. In S. Allan, The Routledge companion to news and journalism (pp.73-81). London: Routledge.

Optional readings

• Amoore, L. (2020). Cloud ethics: Algorithms and the attributes of ourselves and others. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
• Ess, C. (2020). Digital media ethics (3^rd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Floridi, L. (2015). The Onlife manifesto: Being human in a hyperconnected era. Cham: Springer.
• Govia, L. (2020). Coproduction, ethics and artificial intelligence: A perspective from cultural anthropology. Journal of Digital Social Research, 2(3), 42-64.
• LSE Truth, Trust & Technology Commission. (2018). Tackling the information crisis: A policy framework for media system resilience. London School of Economics and Political Science. https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/T3-Report-Tackling-the-Information-Crisis-v6.pdf
• Silverstone, R. (2007). Chapter 1: Morality and media. In R. Silverstone, Media and morality: On the rise of the mediapolis (pp.1-24). Cambridge, U.K.; Malden, Mass.: Polity.
• Tong, J. R. (2022). Data for journalism: Between transparency and accountability. London: Routledge.
• Ward, S. (2015). Chapter 4: Radical media ethics. In S. Ward, Radical media ethics: A global approach (pp.93-118). New York. NY: WILEY.
• Ward, S. (2018). Disrupting journalism ethics: Radical change on the frontier of digital media. London: Routledge.

Week 14: Guest lecture

Week 15: Student presentations/exhibitions (I)

Week 16: Student presentations/exhibitions (II) and conclusion