124182 VK BEd 08b.3: VK Cultural Studies and Language Education (2025W)

The problem of ‘fake news’ stands at the forefront of contemporary cultural and philosophical anxieties about the misaligned incentives of politics, new media, and online identity. However, mistrust in the media is a perennial theme, constantly developed through the emergence of new technologies from the printing press and the camera to broadcasting and the Internet.

In this course, we will explore the historical intersection of new media technologies with the themes of trust, paranoia, propaganda, and hoaxes in the cultural and literary spheres in order to introduce students to some of the key concepts employed in cultural studies. In the rise of pamphlet and newspaper print culture in the 18th century (the so-called ‘Age of Disguise’), we will discuss the satirical use of media hoaxes to highlight a distinction between the ‘truth’ of a certain discourse and those who claim the authority to speak it. We will discuss how in the 19th century, ‘fake news’ develops from a form of satire – as exploited by Daniel Defoe’s insincere political pamphlets, Jonathan’s Swift’s faked astrological pamphlets, and Benjamin Franklin’s sham journalism – to a way of achieving literary effects (gothic, horror, terror, the Uncanny) upon the reader (e.g. Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Balloon Hoax’, the Great Moon Hoax and the Petrified Man hoax). In the 20th century, we will analyse the rise of state and political propaganda media in its various forms (art, painting, radio, cinema, news reporting), but also the ways in which new technologies had changed the dynamics of truth and credulity in media spheres (such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing on the Cottingley Fairies photography fraud and Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast). Finally we will turn to 21st century modes of online culture jamming and culture hacking, and explore the ethics of authorial mis-presentation in the cases of James Frey and JT Leroy. Together, we will learn theoretical and intersectional approaches to these themes which consider the role of propaganda, hoaxing, and trust in constructing and negotiating the social categories of gender, race, sexuality, class.

Attendance:
You may miss two lessons of this course. If a viable doctor's note is produced, you may miss a third but then need to compensate it at the teacher's discretion. If you miss more than three lessons, this will result in your failing the course, due to excessive absence.
This is an interactive course. It relies in large parts on flipped-class room methodologies and therefore requires students' regular in-person attendance.

Dates:
N.B. Please note that there will be no sessions on the 27 October, 17 November, or 24 November. These missing sessions will be replaced by a supplementary block presentation session from 10:00-16:00 on Saturday 17.01.2026.