The Literary Construction of Journalism Education: A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes

Abstract

This article investigates the course literature in the curricula of 12 major journalism schools at Northern European universities. This analysis of the course literature listed in documentation of bachelor programmes traces how journalism education institutions constitute their knowledge base on journalism. It is found that Nordic journalism students are required to read almost four books per study credit on average. Undergraduate academic journalism programmes are professionally oriented, and professional literature by non-scientific publishers occupies a major place in the course literature. A strong emphasis is placed on professional books written in the domestic language, with an average age of seven years. Though the Scandinavian languages show high degrees of similarities with each other, there is very little circulation of literature across the countries within the Nordic area. This analysis of the literature points to a relatively homogeneous educational culture with small differences and raises questions about the qualitative dimensions of instructional design.

Exploring the Normative Foundation of Journalism Education: Nordic Journalism Educators’ Conceptions of Future Journalism and Professional Qualifications

“…They have a strong journalistic professionalism, state intervention, welfare-state ideology and a high newspaper circulation and readership and have adopted the same type of media system (Hallin and Mancini 2004) and journalism culture (Ahva et al 2017;Hanitzsch et al 2019) supported by relatively similar systems of journalism education (Hovden et al 2016). There are studies that have focused on the educational infrastructures in the Nordic countries, such as the study programs within the national educational systems in comparison (e.g., Hovden et al 2016;Terzis 2009;Nowak 2019), journalism curricula (Jaakkola 2019) and course literature (Jaakkola and Uotila 2020). In this article, instead of focusing on the structures or pedagogical contents, we concentrate on the relationship that journalism educators have to their object of teaching and study, journalism.…”

Medios de comunicación universitarios como escenarios de aprendizaje: el caso de Ecuador

“…Sin embargo, conforme ha ido cambiando el ecosistema mediático a nivel global, este aprendizaje basado en las prácticas también ha tenido que evolucionar (Valencia-Forrester, 2020), incorporando las propuestas que surgen desde el desarrollo tecnológico, la colaboración interpersonal -característica de la construcción de conocimiento en internet-, por citar algunas. Pero la transformación del enfoque didáctico no se extiende de manera homogénea, sino que todavía persiste el debate sobre qué es el periodismo y cómo debería enseñarse (Jaakkola y Uotila, 2020), o cómo evaluar las habilidades adquiridas en las escuelas de Periodismo (Wao et al, 2020).…”