UMass Boston

Course Overview

Description

This course will focus on the information revolution and international relations, media coverage of international issues such as the war in Iraq, the use of geographic information systems to analyze conflict, and the popular revolutions that swept across the Middle East. Students will learn to utilize the internet to analyze themes and geographic patterns of coverage of world events from a wide-variety of online media sources, including English language newspapers such as The Jerusalem Post, The Independent (Bangladesh), the St. Petersburg Times, The Japan Times, The Hindustan Times, The East African Standard, The People's Daily, The Teheran Times, The Jakarta Post, and the Yemen Times. Students can log on to the Kidon media link, which will connect them to hundreds of newspapers and news sources from Europe (some in English) or "Paperboy", which is a source of hundreds of newspapers and magazines online. Students will learn to access other media sources online such as the US State Department's media reaction page, the "World News Connection" website, and "Middle east online" among others. The course will conclude with a case study of the phenomenon of WikiLeaks as it applies to global affairs.