This course is anchored in a cross-disciplinary approach that centers on the transformation of Arab journalism and presents it through contemporary media theories and a comparative cultural studies perspective. The goal is to give students a rich overview of the intersections of current events of social and political developments in the Arab region and the way these events are changing the culture and meaning of Arab journalism. While shaping journalism and being shaped by it, new venues of information sharing that require public participation are emerging and enlarging the public’s involvement in social and political issues. In particular, citizen journalism has become one of the most popular and viable areas for social activism and incentives for a better quality journalist work. Working with the insights of contemporary media theories, lectures cover a rich variety of topics dealing with the freedom of press, shifting borders of Iraq and Syria, Occupied Palestine, proxy wars, currents and counter-currents of ideological hegemony (GCC/Iran), and new armed conflicts in the region.

The purpose of this course is to teach students the techniques of investigative journalism and explain the role of investigative work in advancing public awareness in modern societies. With several practice opportunities, students will learn methods of information gathering, data verification, and the relevance of developing interview questions in order to polish their story production skills. For these reasons, we are going to use a variety of teaching methods, including but not limited to lectures, workshops, case studies, guest speakers and oral presentations. By the end of this course, students will be able to propose, pitch, research and produce an investigative project in the media format they choose (written, audio, video...) which will be considered for publication or broadcast in university or local media outlets.

This course provides a comprehensive grounding in global journalism as a new field of media that goes beyond covering international to include relevant global issues. More specifically, it introduces students to transnational issues that impact domestic policies within the context of globalization. Questions of global communities, climate change, security, human rights, social justice, and freedom of the press are addressed. Students will be exposed to a detailed and critical understanding of the theoretical and practical concepts of information sharing paradigms in a borderless world. This course is structured around the reading of scholarly literature in the field of globalization, media law, media ownership and concentration, journalism ethics, and media regulation. The theoretical side aims to familiarize students with major critical approaches in media and globalization. The practical component facilitates direct involvement in the working areas of research and reporting, visits to operating agencies and institutions such as media outlets, organizations, and NGO’s. Students will have to produce their own stories building on the outcomes of this course.

This course examines the relationship between news media, sports, and society. The course presents various approaches to the study of sports and journalism reporting to encourage students to develop a critical understanding of how various media industries, cultural values, race and gender are deeply implicated in sports journalism. In addition, the course will foster students’ awareness of the challenges, skills, and responsibilities sports journalists require to report on sports and society.

This course will help students gain an in-depth and nuanced understanding of all the complexities and intricacies surrounding the environment. The course sheds light on the basics of environmental news coverage, including topics such as energy preservation, recycling, global warming, climate changes, water supply and air pollution. The course also delves into how individuals, organizations and governments approach environmental crises. Students enrolled in this course will learn how to report responsibly on environmental issues, conduct effective interviews with environmental experts, and identify the most ideal sources for news articles and feature stories related to the environment. A skill that would be taught in this course is how to simplify scientific jargon related to the environment so that the average audiences can understand how to deal with complex environmental problems.

News is not just an abstract term that can be studied in a vacuum, but it has various socio-political and socio-cultural dimensions that affect how it is structured and how it is perceived by the audiences. This course examines how news influences society and how it is produced, with particular attention to the way individual, organizational and institutional-level constraints determine news outcomes. The course will address key questions related to news, such as how is news manufactured, what are the features of various media institutions, how much impact do they have on society, and what are the recent changes that may have affected the news media and journalistic profession. In the context of this course, students will also learn the journalistic routines and the news norms and values.

This hands-on, workshop-oriented course teaches the creative skills of writing, recording, managing and editing news and feature-oriented documentaries. The course also sheds light on the storytelling and narration techniques of documentaries. The course will introduce students to concepts, such as documentary theory, camera aesthetics, cost and budget of producing a visual and audio documentary. Students enrolled in this course will learn how to produce a documentary by utilizing a multi-platform approach that entails in-depth research and practical skills in online and visual journalism.

This course critically engages with key issues around journalistic practice today. Given the developments in media technology and the changes in the political economy of the media, this course rethinks journalistic practices in relation to issues around credibility, objectivity, legitimacy, censorship and freedom of speech. How do we think about media law and ethics in the age of web 2.0? The course encourages students to creatively re-conceptualize media law and ethics in light of new developments in the media. The course will examine different media laws and codes of ethics from within the Arab region and Europe.

This course introduces students to media and cultural research techniques and methods. The course examines the historiographies of knowledge production and research in the field. It focuses on the histories, uses, and limitations of empirical research. It also engages students with problems around research ethics and politics. This course teaches students how to write research proposals; conduct research using empirical methods, including participant observation, interviews, focus groups, surveys, archival research, discourse and textual analysis. The course also prepares students for the methodological shifts and challenges within media studies that are brought about by the development of online and social media research. It invites students to critique and rethink methods of media research in light of Media Studies 2.0.

This courses teaches the standard reporting techniques of investigating, interviewing, observing and documenting information for news stories. It provides the essential skills of gathering, analyzing, fact-checking and structuring news stories and cultivating news sources at various beats. Students in this course will learn how to enhance their critical thinking skills that are needed to fact-check the information, assess the newsworthiness of various events and produce accurate and precise news stories. The course will also focus on public affairs reporting and will include visits to various ministries and the courthouse so that the students can experience firsthand how news is gathered and processed on the scene. The course will also delve into some conceptual and legal issues, such as freedom of information laws, libel, invasion of privacy and the increasing role of citizen journalism.

In order to write for digital media practitioners must be familiar with different kinds of skill sets and technologies as well as engage with audiences that are increasingly producing content, rather than merely consuming it. The changes brought about by digital technologies require that media professionals, especially in the field of journalism, learn how to effectively engage and communicate with them. The Writing for Digital Media course will teach students how to practically engage with convergence journalism. Through lectures and hands-on seminars, we will examine both technical and rhetorical possibilities of social media, data visualization, hyperlinking, blogging and online environments. The course is specifically designed to hone students’ writing style and skills, and adapt them to the tastes, habits and inclinations of online audiences. Emphasis will be placed on the development of such skills as storytelling and reporting, information gathering, editing and online publishing.

In this course, students will acquire the necessary skills to produce creative and thought-provoking journalism. The Data Journalism course will teach students how to use the Internet and other digital tools to acquire data and integrate them in news stories. Through weekly lectures and seminars, the course will review ways to acquire, analyse and present data (coding and data visualization, computer-assisted reporting, writing, editing, visual design and infographics) on topics such as politics, economics, health or crime. Students will learn how to manage information and produce news reports that will be informative, analytical and captivating. Through readings and class discussions, students will envision how and in what ways data journalism can improve the coverage of issues and events relevant to the Arab world. Class activities will include student-led projects, such as the production of infographics, proposals for reports on political and economic issues, the development of news apps. Prior experience is not assumed, but students are expected to be familiar at least with social media and word processing, and should be willing to learn new technology skills.

This course explores how media technologies have evolved over time and how media and communication academics have studied the ways in which the media have shaped the modern world. The course engages with key landmarks in thinking about media and communication theory and critiques the discourses of technological determinism whilst acknowledging the impact technology has on social transformations. The course will introduce media histories beyond a chronological approach, emphasising the interdependent relationships between the social, the cultural, the political and the economic. The second part of the course proposes a new historicist approach that situates media histories within a glocal rather than a West-centric context. Students will be expected to not only critique media and communication theory, but to situate it within a context that informs local cultures and everyday life in the Arab region.

The construction of narratives is a key component of journalism. As a practitioner, one should have a solid command of both theoretical and practical elements informing the profession in order to create informative, analytical and appealing stories. The advent of digital technologies is changing the way in which journalists create and present stories to their readers. The Multimedia Storytelling course will teach students how to understand and apply scholarly and professional works focusing on multimedia storytelling. Students will learn how to create narratives through the integrated usage of text, images, audio and video elements, infographics and data. Through weekly lectures and practical assignments, students will refine their reporting and writing skills while at the same time acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge to select the appropriate tools and methods to conceive, develop and deliver a multimedia storytelling project.

This course provides the hands-on skills needed to operate a video camera and editing equipment and produce televised news stories, using audio and video recording in the pre and post-production stages. Students in this course will also learn camera color balancing, lighting techniques, videography and visual composition. Students enrolled in the course may also choose to focus on other areas of interest, such as film editing, audio mixing, sound design, dialog editing, special effects, producing still or animated computer-graphics and on-camera talent. These are all required skills for job-specific training in video television careers. Students who finish this course can develop a portfolio, including their creative work that they designed in the course and that would reflect the advanced knowledge that they would have attained in the field of video artwork, digital editing and storytelling.

This course focuses on specialized English language terminology for journalism students. Students will learn to read, understand, interpret, and translate highly technical English language journalism and news texts.

Students in the Journalism program will have the option of choosing between writing a thesis or completing a capstone project. The "thesis" track aims to enable students, through research and the writing and presentation of a thesis, to demonstrate their achievement of the objectives of their study over the two years of the program, in 12,000-18,000 words. The thesis examination consists of two parts; a marked assessment of the thesis by two examiners and an oral defense in front of an examination panel comprised of the same two examiners.