Философия медиакоммуникации и медиаэтика

Магистратура 2020/2021

Статус: Курс обязательный (Производство новостей в международной среде)

Направление: 42.04.05. Медиакоммуникации

Кто читает: Институт медиа

Где читается: Факультет креативных индустрий

Когда читается: 2-й курс, 1, 2 модуль

Формат изучения: без онлайн-курса

Преподаватели: Бережная Тина Сергеевна

Прогр. обучения: Производство новостей в международной среде

Язык: английский

Кредиты: 3

Контактные часы: 36

Full Syllabus

Abstract

In order to understand alternative points of view, one needs to recognize that our own perspectives are based on some deeply engrained assumptions that we consider not only normal but also immutable. Understanding alternative outlooks and imagining suppressed possibilities of dealing with reality requires an intellectual exercise that would question taken-for-granted beliefs, destabilize them, disrupt ideological closures, and thus open the possibility for critical judgment. This course offers such an intellectual journey. It will allow students to imagine contemporaneity not as a closed set of unquestioned ideological canons but as a project of open possibilities: unexpected demands, unprecedented challenges, unforeseeable articulations, and audacious decisions. In order to realize this potential, students will learn to transcend their social context and subvert everyday experience by opening themselves up to the global horizons of an unrestricted social imaginary. The course explores fundamental assumptions underlying ways in which we come to communicate with people, ourselves, and the world surrounding us  the assumptions that have come to us through the outstanding works of modern and post-modern philosophers whose writings reflect and contemplate most fundamental changes in social imaginaries of modern and post-modern societies.

Learning Objectives

To introduce students to major epistemological, ontological, axiological, and praxeological issues underpinning human communication.
To provide students with the tools and vocabulary to speak about human communication across a range of perspectives.
To develop student’s understanding of the metatheoretical assumptions underlying any communicative act.
To provide a core base of knowledge that promotes intellectual debate and dialogue.
To assist students in elaborating their own responses to foundational questions concerning different approaches to the study of human communication.

Expected Learning Outcomes

To be able to differentiate between modern and post-modern social imaginaries;
To be able to evaluate the legacy of Enlightenment philosophy in the negative manifestations of modernity.
To be able to discuss critically the Enlightenment narratives of progress and development and their negative dialectic;
To be able to employ discourse-analytical tools to analyze hegemonic discursive constructions;
To be able to de-construct the hegemony of taken-for-granted values and beliefs;
To be able to de-construct the discourses of Euro-centrism and neoliberalism;
To be able to discern the negative dialectic of Enlightenment in the discourses of progressivism.

Course Contents

The Consciousness and the Unconsciousness of Communication Acts.
Common sense knowledge of social structures & the routine grounds of everyday activities. Ontology. Epistemology. Discourse. Paradigm. Culture.
The philosophical discourse of modernity.
The legacy of the Enlightenment. Emanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy of history. The traces of Hegelian historical imaginary in contemporary political discourses. Karl Marx’s project of alternative modernity. Critique of Hegel, historical materialism, class struggle. The traces of Marxist social imaginary in contemporary political discourses.
The entry into postmodernity.
Nietzsche as a turning point. The criticism of traditional morality & religion. The will to power. Perspectivism. The eternal recurrence of the same. The traces of Nietzschean philosophy in contemporary political discourses. The Frankfurt School. Max Adorno & Theodor Horkheimer: The critique of the Enlightenment. Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man. The trances of the Enlightenment critique in contemporary political discourses.
The postmodern condition.
Michel Foucault. The critique of reason. The alternative way of the philosophy of the subject: Communicative vs. Subject-Centered Reason. The power of discipline. The power of knowledge. Bio-power. Analyzing reality by Foucault’s methodology. Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and simulation. Consumer society. Integral Universe. Is this the end of the Enlightenment? Wrapping up discussion.

Assessment Elements

Attendance/Participation
Reaction Papers
Term Paper
Semester Paper Presentation

Interim Assessment

Interim assessment (1 module)
0.2 * Attendance/Participation + 0.4 * Reaction Papers + 0.1 * Semester Paper Presentation + 0.3 * Term Paper
Interim assessment (2 module)

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Baysha, O. (2018). Miscommunicating Social Change : Lessons From Russia and Ukraine. Lanham: Lexington Books. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1925444

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Hegel, G. W. F. (1836). The Philosophy of History. McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsrep&AN=edsrep.b.hay.hetboo.hegel1836

Course Syllabus