Convenor: Professor Shani Orgad

This course explores the role of contemporary media in the representation of meanings in a global context. It considers the opportunities and challenges globalisation entails for media representation. The course sets a theoretical framework for the study of representations and the production of meaning in the contemporary landscape of global media., The discussion focuses on the representation of the Other and the production of difference, and the representation of suffering, timely issues whose centrality is ever more vivid. The course addresses the ways in which contemporary developments, especially the expansion of new media, may transform and challenge how public issues are represented. In particular, it examines opportunities that new media present to individuals, networks and communities to represent themselves, and how the self-representations they produce may challenge other texts and images. The course concludes with a discussion of the moral and ethical consequences of representation in a global context, for media professionals, audiences and analysts.