Reflection

Now that this semester is coming to an end, it’s time to reflect on the past weeks and everything we did in our university course “Inside the News Media”. I chose this course not only due to my personal interest in the media and their role in our society, but also because of our lecturer Geoffrey Miller. And I’m thankful I got to attend “Inside the News Media”, because it broadened my view in many aspects.

At first, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Being a student of Communication Sciences (or “Publizistik” as we call it in German), I was convinced that my knowledge about the media was rather good. I could have told you everything about media theories and ways to analyse news content and its effect on the recipient, but it quickly transpired that all of this knowledge differed very much from what we discussed in this course. E.g. I never analysed a newspaper that thoroughly or looked as closely at the US media system as I did for the blog posts we had write. In terms of criticising the media, it changed my view and made me think about it a bit more critically than I was used to in other Communication Sciences courses.

However, there were also a few sessions when I got slightly irritated about the way of putting the media in one box or the other without any second thought. It’s always easier to criticise something than to take a closer look and try to understand why certain decisions were made. In my opinion, some topics were handled a bit superficially and some course discussions made me wonder who would be the first to call them “Lügenpresse”. Thankfully, it never got this far.

Writing these blog posts has been far more fun than I first thought and it’s been a great way of expanding our knowledge on the topics that interested us the most. I wish we did more of this in Communication Sciences or other university courses. To sum up, I can honestly say that I very much enjoyed this course and I wish you, Geoffrey, all the best for your future. It’s been a pleasure!