Media and Power: Introduction

I'm going through the free university mini-course Media and Power from the University of Iowa, and am going to try and take notes as I go. (Yes I do intend to get back to the Ursula K LeGuin book. One day. Shh)

This handbook guides students through concepts, content, and exercises that help them develop media literacy by understanding media and power. The authors want students to not only gain the ability to critically analyze the languages and discourses – textual, visual, audio, and code – that people use to create and interpret media content, but also to understand the overarching context: media possess immense power in contemporary societies around the world.

So far there has been A Lot of focus on US political reporting, which is very reasonable but is not actually my preferred area of focus.
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