The first-level distance Master’s Course in Global Journalism is aimed at developing operational skills in the field of journalism, paying particular attention to the new forms of journalism born from and spreading with the pervasiveness of the new digital media. The transfer of the required cognitive tools will be carried on by means of international and interdisciplinary distance teaching, delivered in three languages: Arabic, English and Italian.
The International character of this study course, which is represented also by its teaching staff, meets the need for supplying students with skills that are up to the global dimension of the new forms of journalism.  
The interdisciplinary character of these studies, deeply rooted into a path that is oriented towards the specificity of the knowledge and practices of contemporary journalism, enables to manage the complexity of contemporary tools and issues.
The Master’s Course in Global Journalism is aimed, in particular, at young graduates and at students coming from schools of journalism or at young journalists who wish to deepen their knowledge in the field of information. Therefore, special attention, is devoted to the new forms of journalism, existing in the international context,  which are also linked to the pervasiveness of the use of the new communication technologies in the journalist’s profession (e-journalism, journalism 2.0, narrowcast journalism). These specific skills are rooted into a training path including knowledge based on journalistic languages and techniques, including also background knowledge and this in order to supply journalists with abilities to get an insight into the issues of contemporary life, at the basis of the ever-increasingly spreading needs for a specialised and global journalism. Particular attention is devoted to the background and to the world of journalism of the Mediterranean Basin Countries.

Teaching programme

This Master’s Course lasts one academic year corresponding as whole to 60 ECTS credits, comprising video lessons, seminars, practice work, conferences, tutoring. This Master’s Course includes 3 modules corresponding to a total of 14 courses. 

 

1) Communication, Media and the Audience (8 ECTS credits)

• The History of Communication: from its origins to the present day: orality, writing, electronic, digital press  
• The Theories of Communication: “The Media Masters” 
• Studies on the Audience:
  • Surveys on circulation, audience rates, reception by the audience
  • Surveys functions and techniques
  • Press offices
  • Techniques for constructing events

2) Journalistic Communication (42 ECTS credits)

• Structures and Techniques of the Journalist’s Profession:
  • The news concept and practice
  • Information agencies and sources
  • Newspapers
  • Magazines
  • Free press
  • Online newspapers
• Radio information
  • The language of the radio
  • Local, national and international networks
  • The radio news and information programmes
• Televised information
  • Terrestrial, satellite and cable broadcasting (IPTV)
  • Local, national and International networks
  • TV news
  • Information programmes and talk-shows
• Newspapers and cross-border news networks
• Political communication
  • Language
  • Rules
  • Effects
• Public communication
  • Public relations offices           
• The newsroom 
  • Newspaper direction
  • Relationships with the owner
  • The structure of the newsroom – inner affairs, foreign affairs, daily news, economy, legal news, culture and entertainment, sports, local information
• Where information is going
  • New media techniques and language
  • Journalism 2.0
  • Specialised journalism
  • An overview on journalism in the Mediterranean Countries

3) Media management (10 CFU)

• Legal-institutional profiles: the evolution of the press, radio, television and of the Internet
• The media economy
  • Market and information            
  • Dimensions of the publishing company
  • Dimensions of the networks and of the ICT
  • Dimensions of advertising revenues                       
• The ethics of information
  • Applicable laws
  • Self-regulatory codes
  • Professional code of conduct

Teaching method

The teaching model is based on the Internet. In the “Master” section of the portal www.uninettunouniversity.net , the first portal of the world where teaching is carried on in 4 languages: Italian, English, French and Arabic.
The adopted psycho-pedagogic model is characterised by the shift:

• From teacher’s central role to the student’s central role;
• From knowledge transfer to knowledge creation;
• From a passive and competitive learning to active and collaborative learning

Students play an active role in their own learning process and can study whenever and wherever they prefer to. Along their training path, students are supported by an online tutoring system that facilitates their training and web-based communication path and supplies them with the tools to carry out their study of a specific subject successfully.
Online tutoring is organised in classes of students and is based on an advanced system of agenda that can acknowledge any individual student and therefore customise and get the tracking of all training activities and qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the each individual student’s learning progress.

How to study

The training activities on the Internet are carried on in the Web-based macro-area, called the Didactic Cyberspace. In the Didactic Cyberspace the training and learning process takes place and access profiles are diversified through customized logins and passwords, based on the three different roles played by the actors of the learning process: Professors, Tutors and Students. These three categories of users can access the same information related to each course. In particular the Professors and Tutors can edit or replace training materials and add new ones for the whole course delivery period, whereas the student has at his disposal an area where he can enter data, information and personal notes. The student can access:

1. the Page of the Appointed Teaching Professor
2. the Page of the Tutor.

These pages include the Learning Environments where is possible to access:

• Didactic Materials which represent the course contents: digitized video lessons including bookmarks allowing for hyper-textual and multimedia linking to books, selected bibliographical references, texts of the exercises, lists of selected websites. The system of dynamic bookmarks gives the Internet-based video lessons a hyper-textual character allowing different levels of navigation: from one lesson to the other one, among subjects of a single lesson, between the materials referring to the same subject.
• Distance Tutoring. The students enrolled in the Master’s course will be assisted, at every step of their study path, by Telematic Professors-Tutors. The Telematic Professor-Tutor, acts as a guide as well as a constant presence along the Learning Process. The distance Tutoring activities may be carried out in two ways:

1. in a synchronic manner, by using chats, video-chats, video and audio-conferencing, implemented in the Didactic Cyberspace, but also the three-dimensional classroom created on the UTIU Island of knowledge on Second Life.
2. in a diachronic manner, through tools such as e-mail and discussion forums on the Internet. The discussion forums, related to the topics of a given teaching subject, enable to enlarge dialogue and trigger a collaborative learning and give the opportunity for autonomous thinking on the issue being discussed and on the study activities carried on.

• The virtual classroom in UNINETTUNO Island of Knowledge on Second Life
  On UNINETTUNO (International Telematic University) Island of Knowledge we shall realise a 3D Auditorium devoted to the Master’s course. In this environment the students and professors/tutors’ avatars interact in the three-dimensional world of UNINETTUNO by their voice. Practice work, assessment tests and videoconferences with the protagonists of the Master’s Course, who will be attending through their avatars, are carried out, as well as real-time practice activities guided by the professors/tutors’ avatars.

In the virtual classroom of Second Life on the UNINETTUNO Island of Knowledge the students and the professors/tutors teach and learn in a collaborative and cooperative way; they build and share knowledge with people belonging to different political, cultural and religious settings, they dialogue, cultural differences are confronted, socialization processes are implemented as well as the creation of new knowledge.

Target Students and Requirements

The Master’s Course in Global Journalism is aimed at all students who hold a degree. It is aimed at students of the fields of communication, media and journalism and at professional journalists.
Proficiency in at least one foreign language is required.