Opinion and the Media

The unprecedented proliferation of news sources in the online era has given rise to a newly central role for the use of opinion in media. The course looks at how opinion functions as interpretation, analysis, assessment and sometimes advocacy and has experienced a sharp rise in its news media context as an explanatory device within the great multiplication of information sources. Opinion-givers are also featured personalities in a media realm that increasingly relies on prominent personalities and which finds a new home on the Internet, where opinion is often a dominant modality. Yet this practice-based course also details how opinion journalism must be grounded in traditional journalistic requirements of research, accuracy and attention to opposing views.