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

Course schedule

Week	Date	Topic
1	9/3	Introduction: News and journalism in Taiwanese society and in other (democratic) societies around the world
2	9/10	Search engines & convergence
3	9/17	Platforms & algorithms
4	9/24	Social media platforms (I)
5	10/1	Social media platforms (II): YouTube
6	10/8	Social media platforms (III): Meme and remix
7	10/15	Midterm essay discussion (I)
8	10/22	Midterm essay discussion (II)
9	10/29	Essay writing and submission Submission of your essay by 23.59 on 31 October (Friday)
10	11/5	Platformization (I): The family realm
11	11/12	Platformization (II): The political realm
12	11/19	AI and automation
13	11/26	Citizens in the 21st century: Media literacy and ethics
14	12/3	Guest lecture by Dr Carlo Berti, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University
15	12/10	Student presentations/exhibitions (I)
16	12/17	Student presentations/exhibitions (II) and conclusion

 

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. 9-35) 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: Search engines and convergence

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.

*Classroom activity: Scriptural inference in Google searches

Required readings

• Jenkins, H. (2004). The cultural logic of media convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7(1), 33-43.
• Tripodi, F. B. (2022). Step four: Understand how information flows. In F. B. Tripodi (Ed.), The propagandists' playbook How conservative elites manipulate search and threaten democracy (pp.101-125). New Haven: Yale University Press.

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.
• Rogers, R. (2023). Algorithmic probing: Prompting offensive Google results and their moderation. Big Data & Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231176228
• Tong, J. R., & Lo, S. H. (Eds.). (2017). Digital technology and journalism: An international comparative perspective. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
• 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

Week 3: Platforms and algorithms

*Classroom activity: Behind our screens – watching ‘The Cleaners - Official Trailer’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGCGhD8i-o4), ‘The Cleaners Who Scrub Social Media’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwbwxStnI3M), and ‘Brexit: The Uncivil War’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5S1EMmCWAE)

Required readings

• Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’. New Media & Society, 12(3), 347-364.
• van Dijck, J., Poell, T., & De Waal, M. (2018). Chapter 2: Platform mechanisms. In J. van Dijck, T. Poell, & M. De Waal  (Eds.), The platform society: Public values in a connective world (pp. 31-48). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Optional readings

• Bucher, T. (2017). The algorithmic imaginary: Exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 30-44.  
• 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.
• Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Hu, M. (2020). Cambridge Analytica’s black box. Big Data & Society, 7(2), 1-6.
• McGuigan, L. (2019). Automating the audience commodity: The unacknowledged ancestry of programmatic advertising. New Media & Society, 21(11), 2366-2385.
• Pasquale, F. (2015). The black box society: The secret algorithms that control money and information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Week 4: Social media platforms (I)

*Classroom activity: Consider van Dijck’s approach to studying platforms as sociotechnical constructs (Figure 2.1 Disassembling platforms as microsystems) together with Wahl-Jorgensen’s investigation of emotional architecture of social media for an examination of a social media platform of your group choice.

Required readings

• van Dijck, J. (2013). Chapter 2: Disassembling platforms, reassembling sociality. In J. van Dijck (Ed.), The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media (pp.24-44). Cambridge: Polity 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.  

Optional readings

• Bucher, T. (2021). Chapter 4: Engineering a platform: Facebook’s techno-economic evolution. In T. Bucher (Ed.), Facebook (pp.105-136). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). Instagram: Visual social media cultures. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Murthy, D. (2013). Twitter: Social communication in the Twitter age (2^nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Papachariss, Z. (2016). Affective publics and structures of storytelling: Sentiment, events and mediality. Information, Communication & Society, 19(3), 307-324.

Week 5: Social media platforms (II): YouTube

*Classroom activity: Apply concepts described by Burgess and Green (2018) to analysing your favourite YouTube genre, channel, or video.

Required readings

• Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2018). Chapter 1: How YouTube matters. In J. Burgess, & J. Green, (Eds.), YouTube: Online video and participatory culture (2^nd ed.). (pp.1-23). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2018). Chapter 5: YouTube’s cultural politics. In J. Burgess, & J. Green, (Eds.), YouTube: Online video and participatory culture (2^nd ed.). (pp.123-139). Cambridge: Polity Press.

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.
• van Dijck, J. (2013). Chapter 6: YouTube: The intimate connection between television and video sharing. In J. van Dijck (Ed.), The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media (pp.110-131). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Vernallis, C. (2013). Unruly media: YouTube, music video, and the new digital cinema. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Week 6: Social media platforms (III): Meme and remix

*Classroom activity: Work in pair to analyse one meme or remix video.

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.
• Shifman, L. (2011). An anatomy of a YouTube meme. New Media & Society, 14(2), 187-203.

Optional readings

• Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2018). Chapter 3: YouTube’s popular culture. In J. Burgess, & J. Green (Eds.), YouTube: Online video and participatory culture (2^nd ed.). (pp.59-93). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Navas, E., Gallagher, O., & Burrough, X. (2018). Keywords in remix studies. New York: Routledge.
• 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
• Smith, N., & Copland, S. (2022). Memetic moments: The speed of Twitter memes. Journal of Digital Social Research, 4(1), 23-48.

Week 7: Midterm presentations (I)

Week 8: Midterm presentations (II)

Week 9: Essay writing and submission

*Please upload your essay to Moodle by 23.59 on 31 October (Friday).

 

Week 10: Platformization (I): The family realm

*Classroom activity: Discuss how you communicate with your family members, especially pertaining to social issues, and reflect on how the family as a primary site of socialisation could be disrupted by platforms.

Required readings

• Livingstone, S., & Sefton-Green, J. (2025). Chapter 2: The platformization of the family. In J. Sefton-Green, K. Mannell, & O. Erstad (Eds.), The platformization of the family: Towards a research agenda (pp.7-23). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Yu, S. H. (2022). Chapter 5: Mediating generations and the family: Differing democratic imaginaries, sustained familial harmony and limited political conversation. In S. H. Yu (Ed.), Mediating democracy: The generations of Soft Authoritarianism and Democratic Consolidation in Taiwan (pp. 109-151) [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. London School of Economics and Political Science.

Optional readings

• Goulden, M. (2021). ‘Delete the family’: Platform families and the colonisation of the smart home. Information, Communication & Society, 24(7), 903-920.
• Hartmann, M., Carpentier, N., & Cammaerts, B. (2007). Chapter 9: Learning about democracy: Familyship and negotiated ICT users’ practices. In P. Dahlgren (Ed.). Young citizens and new media: Learning for democratic participation (pp. 167-186). London; New York, NY: Routledge.
• Lee, M. C. (2024). Memes of care: Good morning images and digital care among older people in Taiwan. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 18, 311-333.
• Mannell, K., Hegna, K., & Stoilova, M. (2025). Chapter 3: The home as a site of platformization. In J. Sefton-Green, K. Mannell, & O. Erstad (Eds.), The platformization of the family: Towards a research agenda (pp.25-45). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Sinanan, J., & Hjorth, L. (2018). Chapter 10: Careful families and care as ‘kinwork’: An intergenerational study of families and digital media use in Melbourne, Australia. In B. Neves, & Casimiro, C. (Eds.). Connecting families?: Information & communication technologies, generations, and the life course (pp. 181-199). Cham: Springer. Bristol; Chicago, IL: Policy Press.

 

Week 11: Platformization (II): The political realm

Required reading

• Hurcombe, E. (2024). Conceptualising the “newsfluencer”: Intersecting trajectories in online content creation and platformatised journalism. Digital Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2024.2397088
• 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.
• Schmuck, D., Hirsch, M., Stevic, A., & Matthes, J. (2022). Politics – simply explained? How influencers affect youth’s perceived simplification of politics, political cynicism, and political interest. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 27(3), 738-762.

Additional reading

• Arnesson, J., & Reinikainen, H. (Eds.). (2024). Influencer politics: At the intersection of personal, political, and promotional. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter.
• Divon, T., & Krutrök, M. E. (2024). Playful trauma: TikTok creators and the use of the platformed body in times of war. Social Media + Society. DOI: 10.1177/20563051241269281
• Eldridge, S. A. (2019). Where do we draw the line? Interlopers, (ant)agonists, and an unbounded journalistic field. Media and Communication, 7(4), 8-18.
• Holton, A. E., & Belair-Gagnon, V. (2018). Strangers to the game? Interlopers, intralopers, and shifting news production. Media and Communication, 6(4), 70-78.
• Maddox, J. (2023). Micro-celebrities of information: Mapping calibrated expertise and knowledge influencers among social media veterinarians. Information, Communication & Society, 26(14), 2726-2752.
• Maddox, J., & Creech, B. (2021). Interrogating LeftTube: ContraPoints and the possibilities of critical media praxis on YouTube. Television & New Media, 22(6), 595-615.
• 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.
• Riedl, M. J., Lukito, J., & Woolley, S. C. (2023). Political influencers on social media: An introduction. Social Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177938
• 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.

 

Week 12: AI and automation

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.

 

*Classroom activity 1: Watching ‘Hayao Miyazaki's thoughts on an artificial intelligence’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc) and consider the questions of what artificial intelligence is, what human intelligence is, and what being human is about.

 

*Classroom activity 2: Consider ‘The UN Made AI-Generated Refugees’ (https://youtube.com/shorts/UZnPkTvlwzo?si=5Sk4xBHhpF0F7E2W) and the ‘Prototype: Mr Democracy 2.0’ project by Institute for Information Industry (https://youtube.com/shorts/jcg3OchxAuA?si=3-2P9AGeZSpVByEj)

 

Required readings

• 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.
• Natale, S. (2021). Chapter 1: The Turing test: The cultural life of an idea. In S. Natale (Ed.), Deceitful media: Artificial intelligence and social life after the Turing test (pp.16-32). New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190080365.003.0002

Optional readings

• Arguedas, A. R., & Simon, F. M. (2023). Automating democracy: Generative AI, journalism, and the future of democracy. Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute, University of Oxford. https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/BII_Report_Arguedas_Simon.pdf
• 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.
• Makhortykh, M., Zucker, E. M., Simon, D. J., Bultmann, D., & Ulloa, R. (2023). Shall androids dream of genocides? How generative AI can change the future of memorialization of mass atrocities. Discover Artificial Intelligence, 3(28). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44163-023-00072-6
• Marconi, F. (2020). Newsmakers: Artificial intelligence and the future of journalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Mitchell, M. (2019). Prologue: Terrified. Artificial intelligence: A guide for thinking humans. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Natale, S. (2021). Chapter 3: The ELIZA effect: Joseph Weizenbaum and the emergence of chatbots. In S. Natale (Ed.), Deceitful media: Artificial intelligence and social life after the Turing test (pp.50-67). New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190080365.003.0004
• 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.
• Tuohy-Gaydos, G. (2024). Artificial intelligence (AI) in action: A preliminary review of AI use for democracy support. The Westminster Foundation for Democracy. https://www.wfd.org/what-we-do/resources/artificial-intelligence-ai-action-preliminary-review-ai-use-democracy-support
• Turkle. S. (2015). The end of forgetting: What do we forget when we talk to machines? In S. Turkle (Ed.), Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age (pp.337-362). New York, NY.: Penguin Press.
• Wajcman, J. (2017). Automation: Is it really different this time? The British Journal of Sociology, 68(1), 119-127.

Week 13: Citizens in the 21^st century: Media literacy and 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.

*Classroom activity: Create your ‘news/information map’, and reflect on how you can engage with the media in a more ethical way.

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.
• 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.

Optional readings

• Amoore, L. (2020). Cloud ethics: Algorithms and the attributes of ourselves and others. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
• boyd, D. (2017). Did media literacy backfire? Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 1(4), 83-89.
• 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.
• Jin, D. Y. (2021). Chapter 8: New media ethics in the age of AI. In D. Y. Jin (Ed.), Artificial intelligence in cultural production: Critical perspectives on digital platforms (pp.133-150). Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.
• 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.
• Tripodi, F. B. (2022). Step three: Engage in their own form of media literacy. In F. B. Tripodi (Ed.), The propagandists' playbook How conservative elites manipulate search and threaten democracy (pp.74-100). New Haven: Yale University 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.
• 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 by Dr Carlo Berti, Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Charles University

Week 15: Student presentations/exhibitions (I)

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