220014 SE FOSE: SE FOSE B Advanced Research Seminar B (2018S)

Journalismus und Menschenrechte. Internationale Perspektiven und Herausforderungen.
Im Rahmen des Seminars soll erforscht werden, wie JournalistInnen in den unterschiedlichen Ländern in ihrer Berichterstattung über sensible Themen wie Flüchtlinge und Migration menschenrechtliche Perspektiven berücksichtigen. JournalistInnen sind – wie Weischenberg schreibt – einerseits der Aufklärung, den Werten von Freiheit und Vernunft verpflichtet und andererseits praktisch-pragmatischen Vorgaben, wie denen des eigenen Mediums (vgl. Weischenberg 2018). In unterschiedlichen nationalen und internationalen Codizes wird festgelegt, nach welchen Grundsätzen Handlungsnormen von JournalistInnen bestimmt werden können und wie diese in einem Kontext zur individuellen Verantwortung von JournalistInnen stehen.
Davon ausgehend sollen im Seminar folgende Fragen bearbeitet werden:
Welchen Stellenwert haben Menschenrechte in der Berichterstattung? Welche Aspekte werden dabei beachtet? Und gibt es überhaupt einen grundsätzlichen massenmedialen Diskurs über Menschenrechte? Welche Positionen vertreten dabei die JournalistInnen?

Citizenship, Communication and Information Rights in Europe - Jean Monnet Course

This course aims to explore critical challenges to communication and information rights and their impact on the exercise of citizenship in the European context. The course is based on writings and research around communication rights as political claims and Information rights as existing legal basis.

The course engages with recent developments in Europe which raise concerns about the state of democracy in the polity: from intimidation and harassment of journalists to pressures on the media and the rise of echo chambers and the so-called 'fake news', some argue that what we are witnessing is the rolling back of democratic rights, including the right to relevant, accurate information. In this vein, the functioning of a public sphere under conditions of crisis is compromised. Who speaks, who is heard and what is being spoken? The basic questions are posed anew, this time in relation to the European context.

Hence, the question of European integration is connected precisely in its relation to upholding or not upholding fundamental freedoms and whether national sovereignty undermines or strengthens these rights.

Students will be introduced to the conceptual framework of a rights-based approach to analysing media practice, media policy, and facets of citizenship connected with the media, such as political participation online and privacy. Students will also gain deeper understanding of the complexity of communication and information rights in the European Union, and by the end of the course, they will be able to design and execute research in relevant fields.

Topics addressed in this course will include e.g. restrictions, pressures and enablers for democratic citizenship practice in relation to human rights, such as
privacy,
access to information,
right to dignity,
presumption of innocence,
right to protection (e.g., in the case of refugees),
children's digital rights,
gender and information rights.

The course will draw upon contemporary matters in the real world, and students will be encouraged to actively engage with relevant questions during their projects.
For this reason, students will be taught how to produce a blog post that connects scholarship to real world affairs in a way that is accessible to a lay audience.
The best pieces will be published on the Media Governance and Industries Research Lab website as part of the Jean Monnet stream of work ( http://mediagovernance.univie.ac.at ).

This is a designated Jean Monnet course associated with the Jean Monnet Chair of Professor Sarikakis.