Special Note
This is a 2nd year elective course.
Course overview
This course is designed to allow you to immerse yourself in all things audio. We will focus on core skills like focus, story development, Interviewing and sound gathering. We will discuss the technical aspects of audio storytelling and the factors that turn good stories in to great ones. We will work on ways to develop your own voice in audio storytelling. This is a craft course. You will be challenged to create audio stories that allow you to practice both technical skills and learn techniques to use your own voice.
In this course you will be encouraged to think about stories and sound and silence. We will discuss interviewing techniques; audio design and power dynamics.
This course will offer students the opportunity to listen and critique audio stories and to participate in the performance, interviewing and the production process.
Special Note
This is a 2nd year elective course.
Course overview
This is a second-year graduate level course for students interested in understanding the role of numerical data in journalism research and reporting.
This course is an introduction to data journalism. You do not need any prior skills or experience in statistics, graphic design, computer programming or specific software. It presumes no prior background in statistical methods or graphic design. To be a good data journalist you need to have a curious mind, attention to detail and critical thinking. Together, we will learn how to use various free data tools you can use in newsrooms around the world.
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- produce a story driven by data.
- Find, pitch and tell data-driven stories.
- Understand the ethical implications of data journalism.
- Recognize what makes a good data visualization.
- Find data through open data portals, public data sets and FOIs.
- Interrogate, clean and fact-check data sets.
- Create simple graphs, maps and charts to help drive storytelling.
- Understand data visualizations and be able to recognize errors and deception.
Special Note
This is a 2nd year elective course.
Course overview
Visual storytelling and production have always been crucial aspects of journalism, and the evolving newspaper, television and digital landscapes make these tools even more essential for journalists. Whether it is photography or video, visual journalism facilitates the understanding of a narrative through its visual representation, and can serve as a powerful means to conveying stories.
This course is designed to build on the skills and knowledge introduced in first year courses by building on students’ abilities to think about, develop and deliver impactful visual stories. Students will learn a range of visual storytelling techniques — from photography to video. Students will enhance their use of cameras as tools for creating journalistic narratives. The course will provide students with the skills and confidence to engage and inform audiences through accurate insightful and compelling visual journalism.
Special Note
This is a 2nd year elective course.
Course overview
This course builds on students’ interviewing, reporting and storycrafting skills. Students will deepen critical and ethical thinking about selection of sources and interviewing techniques. They will hone abilities to glean and convey more complicated information. They will explore narrative and other techniques well-suited to presenting complex issues to the public. Over the term, the student will pitch, report, structure and complete a single major piece suitable for publishing. This process can help students select and make substantive progress on their final research project; however, intent to do an Final Research Project is not required. The course incorporates lectures, guest speakers, collaborative group work, assigned writing, interactive exercises and individualized problem solving with the instructors. Many students have published their resulting work in quality publications.
Special Note
This is a 2nd year elective course.
Course overview
Investigative Journalism in Documentary Filmmaking offers an in-depth exploration of the investigative process with the context of documentary storytelling. Students will master essential investigative skills, from conducting in-depth research and rigorous fact-checking to cultivating sources and uncovering hidden truths. This course combines theoretical frameworks with practical applications to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to conduct rigorous investigative journalism and produce impactful documentaries that shed light on pressing local and global issues, hold power to account and inspire audience to take action for positive change.
- Investigative Techniques: Develop proficiency in conducting thorough research, cultivating sources, and uncovering hidden truths through investigative journalism methodologies.
- Ethical Considerations: Navigate the ethical complexities of investigative journalism, including issues of privacy, confidentiality, and transparency, while upholding journalistic integrity and responsibility.
- Narrative Development: Students learn to craft compelling narratives that engage and captivate audiences, utilizing advanced storytelling techniques to convey complex investigative findings effectively.
- Impactful Storytelling: Explore innovative multimedia approaches to documentary filmmaking, including interactive elements and immersive experiences, to maximize the impact of investigative reporting.
- Cross-Border Collaboration: Collaborating with journalists and media organizations across borders to investigate transnational issues and hold power to account.
Course overview
This course will provide graduate journalism students with a foundation in scholarly research in Journalism Studies. It integrates theory with practice, as well as case studies, to provide students with the knowledge and expertise they need to critically engage with the circumstances, challenges, and opportunities of present-day journalism. The topics addressed include an introduction to research and referencing, writing a literature review, discussions on various scholarly approaches such as qualitative, quantitative and critical studies, and social action research. The course will enhance the capacity of students to analyse, interpret and integrate scholarly findings into their work, advancing an understanding of the role and relationship between journalistic research and practice.
Special Note
This elective is open to both 1st and 2nd year students. However, this course is mandatory if you are planning to do an Academic Thesis or Final Research Project in your last year.
Course overview
Imagine Journalism Studio is a course for students who are interested in studying leading innovations and innovators in the field, making a difference and experimenting with and through journalism.
The course is designed to prepare students to launch and/or run their own journalism startup. Most journalism courses focus on the norms and practices of content creation, production and representational critique. This course focuses on journalism startups and innovation from practice, organizational, audiences, leadership, theories of change, entrepreneurship and critical perspectives. While technology and technological change are often privileged as antidotes in contemporary discussions of the current journalism crisis, this course takes an integrated approach to the role that technologies, social, cultural and economic structures play in understanding journalism and organizational
success.
Students will study the continuity and changes of what journalism is, could and should be, emerging and contested relationships with global audiences and diverse publics, digital technologies and what actually constitutes innovation, as well as shifting labour conditions for journalists and for-profit journalism economic decline. Students will concurrently work individually or in teams to conceive, research, design and prototype an idea for a journalism project – a startup, product or service – to help meet the information needs of communities.
Special Note
This elective is open to both 1st and 2nd year students.
Course overview
This course offers students a unique opportunity to study and practice reporting in Indigenous communities in the Lower Mainland. Students will learn about local First Nations cultures and history; examine representations of Indigenous peoples in Canadian media; and discuss strategies for in-depth coverage of Indigenous issues. Students’ past work has been published in mainstream media outlets alongside our own multimedia website, www.indigenousreporting.com. Students will explore a new reporting theme each year.
Special Note
This elective is open to both 1st and 2nd year students.
Course overview
Social media have become key components of the digital media environment by offering people opportunities to produce, share, and interpret content, as well as to interact with one another. Journalists are among those who have taken advantage of such opportunities, expanding journalism beyond traditional media outlets and designated news websites.
This course focuses on what journalists and other users do on social media. We will learn concepts and issues related to social media and will gain practice with social media
storytelling. After learning what constitutes social media and how they have developed, we will identify and explain shifting norms and practices of journalism, user engagement with the news, and disinformation and misinformation in the digital media environment.
The course will also offer an insight into politics and social media, social movements and protest, and dark sides of social media, such as harassment. On the practical side, we will learn how to craft posts for different platforms and how to engage with users. We will also write texts and create videos. The course allows you to pursue your interests and to develop knowledge and skills that will help you navigate the challenges and opportunities of the evolving digital landscape.
Special Note
This elective is open to both 1st and 2nd year students. It is cross-listed with JRNL 420 and co-jointly taught with 4th year Bachelor of Media Studies students.
Course overview
When Black Lives Matter gained global momentum in 2020, the movement brought significant public attention to how Black people are dehumanized across the diaspora. But outside of this narrative’s circulation on social and traditional media, on what other terms are we cultured to understand Blackness as a form of racial categorization?
This course explores the manufacturing of and reaction to Blackness within public discourses: in digital memes and hashtags, film, university classrooms, news media, truth-based
discourses, music, and more. We will examine ways Blackness has been coded, (mis)represented, and documented across time and platforms. Taking a diasporic approach, our points of focus will emerge mainly from local and North American contexts, the Caribbean, and the African continent, but will also consider the intersections between race and color, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, (dis)ability in Asia and Europe as well.
Special note
This elective is open to both 1st and 2nd year students. It is cross-listed with WRDS 498G. Journalism students should enrol in the JRNL 520G section of the course