This is a course on media and politics from a political economy approach designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Two unique features of this course are: 1) I will introduce the theoretical and empirical tools used to analyze media and politics issues; 2) I will cover topics in both democratic and authoritarian contexts. Considering the importance of understanding authoritarian politics, the ability to tease out subtle information from news in dictatorships is critical. Hence, apart from discussing important topics such as media ownerships, media capture, and media agenda setting, we will also discuss issues including censorship and self-censorship, media and social movements. We will discuss the impact of social media at the end. Students are expected to have gained a good understanding of the interaction of media and politics, and can retrieve subtle political messages when reading news reports.

Please find the syllabus here: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5gy2k2qv71xbydu/PE7114%20Syllabus.pdf?dl=0