Course Description

The course presents the full array of major risks facing humanity universally and concerning both nature and social organization: environmental sustainability, public health, extreme inequality / poverty, migrations. Seen both from the political economy and communications perspective such challenges are examined through the lens of how usefully they are reported about. Key professional practice issues arise concerning whether severe risks and challenges should be mediated alternatively. ‘Risk Communication’ elucidates such options, discussing the need for ‘proactive journalism’, fostering conscious and conscientious actors: i.e. policy-makers and citizens who contribute to sustainable natural and socio-economic environment.

Course Objectives

• Familiarize with concepts of ‘environmental risk’, ‘social crises’, ‘global public goods’
• Distinguish diverse categories of interlinked risks and challenges
• Grasp consequential irreversible impact of environmental risks / crises on large populations
• Elaborate with notions of ‘normative journalism’ for global awareness and rescue
• Come to terms with non-partisan, activist types of journalism.

Learning Outcomes

1. Identify environmental risks and their concrete impact on society
2. Capacity to analyze risks critically from a multi-stakeholder perspective
3. Ability to compare risks and stakes between competing interests of various kinds, while considering and defending the ‘public interest’
4. Construct proactive journalism methods: defending ‘global public goods’ and the universal common interest
5. Approach humanity’s welfare risks beyond borders or nationalistic scope

 Class/Learning activities

Lectures, workshops, in situ study-visits, group simulation workshops, in-class presentations, literature study, written assignments.

Workload

 Assessment

 Required Reading

• Beck Ulrich, (1991), ‘Risk Society’, Cambridge, Polity Press,
• Beck Ulrich, (2007), ‘World at Risk’, Cambridge, Polity Press
• in Maxwell R. et al. ‘Media and the Ecological Crisis’, (eds), New York, Routledge
• Kaul, Inge, Isabelle Grunberg & Mark A.Stern, (eds), (1999) ‘Global Public Goods’, Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Maxwell Richard, Jon Raundalen, Nina Lager Vestberg, (2014), ‘Media and the Ecological Crisis’, (eds), New York, Routledge
• Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock, (2014), ‘E-waste, Human Waste, Infoflation’,
• Stig A. Nohrstedt (ed), (2010), ‘Communicating Risks: Towards the Threat Society?’, Gothenburg, NORDICOM

Additional Essay-supporting Reading List

• Beck Ulrich, (1988), ‘What Is Globalization?’ Polity Press, Cambridge
• Crenson A. Matthew (1971), ‘The Unpolitics of Air Pollution’, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London
• European Union, Commission, (2008), ‘A sustainable Future in Our Hands: guide to the EU’s sustainable development strategy’, CEC, Luxembourg
• George Soros, (1998), ‘The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered’, New York, Public Affairs
• Gorz Andre, (1980), ‘Ecology as Politics’, South End Press, Boston
• Habermas Jurgen, (2003), ‘The Future of Human Nature’, Cambridge, Polity
• Löfstedt Ragnar & Boholm Åsa, (2009), ‘Risk’, (eds), London, EarthScan Publishing
• Martin Rees, (2003), ‘Our Final Century: will the human race survive the twenty-first century?’, London, Heinemann
• Naomi Klein, (2008), ‘The Shock Doctrine’; Toronto, Random House Limited
• Ralston Saul John (1995), ‘The Unconscious Civilization’ , New York, Free Press