Attended by students from France (including Guadeloupe!) and Ukraine studying Public Relations (PR), the lectures looked at the effects of mass media from a theoretical perspective and examined elements of influence in the political news-making and selection process: how is news created and what exactly is ‘news’? Who decides what is news and what is not?

“In our sessions, we talked about the construction of political news. The students elaborated on French media mechanisms, which were then compared with the Dutch context. These comparisons resulted in very interesting class discussions," says Mr. Wegman.

During the PR case studies, the students had to link theoretical articles to current local news events. To help understand how the news-making process is influenced, students had to retrieve the original source of news articles and observe how they were generated. Students were then asked to write an op-ed article exploring the relationship between journalists and politicians in their own country.

Mr. Wegman has been invited back to lecture again next year and plans to expand on his series of lecturers examining the media.