MEDIA ETHICS – Course Program 2025
Teacher: Professor Roberto Mordacci, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan
Institutional Part
1. Critical media ethics: an introduction (7/01) (mix with Moral reasons and public discourse)
2. Communication and propaganda (8/01) (and satire)
3. The main theories of mass communication (14/01)
4. Mass society: a philosophical perspective I (21/01) (Nietzsche, Ortega, Simmel, Chomsky)
5. Mass society: a philosophical perspective II (22/01) (Nietzsche, Ortega, Simmel, Chomsky)
6. History and Critique of Public Opinion - seminar with Alessandro Volpe (28/01)
7. From mass society to consumer society (29/01) (Horkheimer-Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse)
8. Media Studies and the
post-alphabetic era (4/02) (McLuhan) (The use of images: photography, cinema,
social media – YouTube & Instagram)
Monographic Part: Capitalism and democracy in the era of social media
9. Democracy and social media (5/02) (Sunstein)
10. Storytelling and populism (5/02) (presidents) (and rhetoric)
11. Fake News and algorithms (11/02)
12. Surveillance capitalism I (12/02)
13. Surveillance capitalism II (18/02)
14. Algorithmic governmentality – seminar with Giuseppe de Ruvo (19/02)
15. Rethinking free speech in the digital era I (25/02)
16. Rethinking free speech in the digital era II (26/02)
17. Responsibility and platforms (4/03)
18. Students’ presentations I (5/03)
19. Students’ presentations II (11/03)
20. Students’ presentations III (12/03)
Bibliography
Mandatory Readings:
Cass Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media,
Princeton University Press 2018.
In addition, if you are an attendant student choose one of the texts
below:
Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World,
Yale University Press 2016.
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Public Affairs
2018.
If you are a non-attending student, read both texts.
ORAL EXAM based on:
1. Questions on the mandatory readings, and on the slides as well as the notes
of the course
2. Evaluation of the work done in class in the last lessons. Each student will
have to choose an in-depth study of a topic addressed in the course and make a
presentation in the classroom, which must be agreed upon by e-mail two weeks
before the presentation.
Non-attending students must also make the presentation, albeit during the oral
examination and not in class.
- Docente titolare: Roberto Mordacci