Rhonda Breit

Internationalization as De-Westernization of the Curriculum The Case of Journalism at an Australian University

Internationalization of the curriculum points to the interdependent and interconnected (globalized) world in which higher education operates. However, while international awareness is crucial to the study of journalism, in practice this often means an Anglo-American curriculum based around Western principles of journalism education and training that are deeply rooted in Western values and traditions. This tendency to privilege Western thought, practice, and values obscures from view other journalism practices and renders Western models of journalism desirable, replicable, and transplantable to any part of the world. This article discusses the engagement of a small group of staff in the process of thinking through the meaning of internationalization of the curriculum in their particular disciplinary and institutional context. The staff are located in a school of journalism and communication at a large research intensive university in Australia. The article describes the thinking behind their decision to focus internationalization of the curriculum on “critical de-Westernization” and social imaginaries. This was a gestalt shift resulting from discussion of the way in which “taken for granted” disciplinary canons had hitherto been uncritically embedded into the curriculum. It is argued that treating internationalization of the journalism curriculum as critical de-Westernization has conceptual and practical benefits in a globalized world.

Towards a Narratology of Court Reporting

This article uses the theory of narratology to connect legal discourses and processes with the way the media translate the law into news. It identifies how narratology has been used by other disciplines, notably the law, to provide a framework for better understanding, and uses a range of theories and examples to propose a narratology for court reporting. The research identifies six key elements of narrative and expands these into a three-level schema of story level, discourse analysis and the interpretative context of stories. Finally, the article foreshadows a methodology through which to develop the narratology that follows court proceedings through various stages: from the metanarratives within court to the final production of courts as news. It suggests that such an approach may assist the media to gain greater insights into their involvement within the court system while also providing a deeper understanding between the courts and the media.

Case-based education: A strategy for contextualising journalism curriculum in East Africa

This article explores a set of educational strategies used in a new Master of Arts in Digital Journalism aimed at strengthening the multimedia production skills of East African journalists. Drawing on constructivist theories of learning, the article argues that preparing journalism graduates for unknown futures requires curricula to be contextualised environmentally and cognitively. This has implications for both the process of curriculum planning and the strategies deployed in designing programmatic content and the learning experience. Citing the experiences of implementing a new Master of Arts in Digital Journalism in Kenya, the article describes an issues-framing process used to inform curriculum design to ensure the programme is environmentally relevant. It goes on to describe three innovative ways case-based education can be used to contextualise learning to ensure cognitive relevance. Integrating cases across and through the curriculum develops ‘cognitive flexibility’ in the form of advanced thinking and problem-solving skills. Such skills are essential for journalists to adapt to rapidly changing professional and social contexts. The outcome of this systematic approach to curriculum development is a flexible, spiral curriculum that promotes cognitive flexibility while addressing the discrete educational issues facing East African journalists. The approaches outlined might offer a replicable framework to maintain the environmental and cognitive relevance of journalism education in times of unrelenting change.

How Queensland newspapers reported public sector information reform

This article explores the role of media in Freedom of Information (FOI) policy transfer, using a case study of Queensland’s 2009 FOI reforms. A multi-dimensional analysis was used to discover how newspapers reported changes in Queensland’s public sector information (PSI) policy to identify whether stories on PSI policy were reframed over time. At a quantitative level, the text analytics software Leximancer was used to identify key concepts, issues and trends in 786 relevant articles from national, metropolitan and regional newspapers. At a qualitative level, discourse analysis was used to identify key themes and patterns from the newspaper articles. Both qualitative and quantitative shifts in the media reporting of Right to Information (RTI) and FOI were revealed across three time periods representing the periods before, during and after the reform implementation. The findings offer insights into the role of newspapers in policy diffusion, revealing how Queensland media reports framed the shift in PSI policy from pull model FOI to push model RTI.