Professor Shani Orgad

This course is available on the MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and UCT), MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and USC), MSc in Media and Communications and MSc in Media and Communications (Research). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is 'controlled access', meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted. If the course is oversubscribed, offers will be made via a random ballot process, with priority given to students with the course listed on their Programme Regulations. Whilst we do our best to accommodate all requests, we cannot guarantee you a place on this course.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students should apply via LSE for You without submitting a statement.

Please do not email the teacher with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place.

Images and stories circulated in the media play a central role in informing how we imagine the world, others and ourselves. We become increasingly dependent, often exclusively, on what we see, read and hear in the news, on social media, our favourite television drama series, in advertisements, films, NGO communications or on the radio and podcasts. This course focuses on the way media representations are implicated in the exercise of power over how we think and feel through the construction of meaning. It explores the opportunities that media representations present for the creation of a global and interconnected space, which enables the people living in it to conduct their social, cultural, political and economic lives in more just and inclusive ways. At the same time, the course discusses some of the critical challenges, limits and threats  representations circulating in the contemporary media present. The discussion focuses on the representation of the Other and the production of difference, examining two key themes: the representation of gender, and the representation of migration - timely issues which are ever more urgent in contemporary public life. The course examines how transformations in the contemporary media landscape, such as the expansion of social media platforms, the increasing commodification and global scope of communication, shape the ways in which public issues are framed, imaged, and constructed, the consequences this may have for the moral judgements people make and the possibilities for disrupting dominant narratives and imaginaries.

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the AT.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

All students are expected to complete advance reading, prepare seminar presentations, and submit one essay of 1500 words. All students are required to produce in small teams a short film focused on a real story of migration

• Amin, A. (2012). Land of Strangers, Polity.
• Bauman, Z. (2016). Strangers at Our Door, Polity.
• Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practice, Sage.
• hooks, bell. (2014). Black Looks: Race and Representations. London: Routledge.Macdonald, M. (2003) Exploring Media Discourse, Arnold.
• Orgad, S. (2012) Media Representation and the Global Imagination, Cambridge: Polity.
• Pickering, M. (2001). Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation, Palgrave.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the WT.

Students will prepare this essay individually, based on the short film they produced as part of a team during the course.