ANT 395-01 - Advanced Special Topic: Viral News: Anthropological Investigations of Crisis and the Values of Information Media

4 credits (Spring)

Through news portals, podcasts, and ethnographies of journalism, students will track and interrogate news that covers the social fallout from recent crises, including war, climate emergency, and the pandemic. Ethnoracialization, classism, and other elements of inequality have consistently re-emerged both as themes and frequently as dangerous tropes in coverage. Moreover, omnipresent crisis narratives can slip into political justifications for bipartisan corporate bailouts, censorship and surveillance, as well as bloated military and police budgets. How do clickbait commodification and late capitalist temporalities each pose threats to an ideal of supposedly unfiltered, “just the facts” information-sharing?

Prerequisite: ANT 280 with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Kohl