Rhetoric and propaganda in journalism

Notes from a lecture: The main change since my first time doing this lecture, is the ways in which these concepts now have become commonplace in journalism critique. They did not use to be. But anyway — what is propaganda? And how does it relate to the study of rhetoric? A group of smart MA students …

Leaning on a class to make sense

Every fall semester I teach one of my classes in English, with about 20-30 foreign students visiting our university for a semester. We had our first meeting yesterday. And as always I wonder before class starts whether there is enough in the chosen lecture theme to get them out there on the floor, debating. They …

Terrorism, attention and the media

What determines news coverage and how does it apply to terrorism? The idea that terrorism is PR and journalism has a dramaturgical quality is an idea with a long history, but also a history made extraordinarily relevant with the attacks in the US on September 11th 2001, resulting in the epic, metaphorical – and also …