JOUR459P

The world today is engaged in a fierce battle over the control of information as the precursor to political power and the survival of democracies. The internet, social media and President Trump, among others, delivered us to this historic moment, as did the democratic aspirations for people overseas and the authoritarian reactions against their movements. This course will examine the rise of global censorship and disinformation since Vladimir Putin's election in 2000. Our narrative will take us to Russia, Central and Western Europe, the Arab Middle East and the United States. We will examine the laws protecting U.S. media and technology companies and compare them to those in other countries. We will probe Trumps assertion of fake news against the media and dissect the Mueller Report to evaluate the media's reporting on the Trump administration. Finally, we will conduct an autopsy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election and its immediate aftermath, looking for evidence of both optimism and democracy's survivability. Moderate to heavy reading; emphasis on class participation, including team debates.