Media Wars

Undergraduate / Graduate

Media practices and discourses evoking war or violence are common today, such as the "weaponization" of social media; "cyber warfare" and attacks; "online battlefields;" "guerilla" media tactics; "The Great Meme War" and "Infowars.com," to name a few. In relationship with terms suggesting that we live in an age of "post-truth" dominated by "fake news" or "fact-challenged" journalism, the media wars of today may seem unique to the twenty-first century. But in fact, the history of the use of media to either combat or spread ideas dates back centuries to the earliest phases of mass media and communication. In this class, we will proceed historically, broadly conceiving of media to include print and visual, cultural, and artistic forms, cinema, television, and the internet. While we will explore how media have historically been used to construct or counter dominant systems of representation, we will also discuss how different media forms function formally, learning to analyze how they construct discourses of truth as texts (documentary; propaganda). This class will also function as a contemporary research laboratory where students will be asked to track, evaluate, and theorize contemporary or historical media that are taking part in a so-called "media war."