08/09/2022
Let's have a professors' roundup!
On top left we have Professor Colin Porlezza, who will teach two courses to the new students.
The first one is Swiss Media System, as our media landscape is characterized by its strategic position in the heart of Europe and its cultural diversity: This course covers the structure, the peculiarities, the challenges and the regulation of the Swiss media system.
The promise is to get students interested and involved in the topic through a mix of ex-cathedra lectures, interactive classes and group projects.
The second class held by prof. Porlezza is Journalis, Innovation & Datafication, which focuses on deepening students’ understanding of how the journalistic field is affected by datafication, and how journalism, in turn, tries to adapt to change and the different social and technological challenges.
Besides being a professor at USI, prof. Porlezza is an honorary senior research fellow at the Department of Journalism at City, University of London. Furthermore he is a member of the Federal Media Commission (FMEC in Switzerland and a board member of the Swiss Association of Media and Communication Research where he was Chair of the journalism section as well.
Next we have Professor Eleonora Benecchi, who teaches Social Media management. This course provides students with an overview of today’s social media landscape and the latest social media trends. Two further key points of the course are the hands-on project on creating a social media plan and the chance to get professional certificates of Hootsuite and Google Analytics.
Eleonora Benecchi is a professor and researcher at USI. Her research topics are fandom, participation culture, social media and young people’s media consumption. Since 2012 she is also the coordinator for the Swiss Italian side of the national research, MIKE and JAMES, that analyse the relationship between young generations and media. Furthermore, she is head of the IMeG department for the organization of Documentary Summer School of the Locarno Film Festival.
Next on the top row we have professor Matthew Hibberd, who also teaches two modules this semester, the first one being The Platform Society, whose main aim is the students' development of skills necessary to understand trends and changes in current media environments and media economies, and
to critically assess academic and media discourses about these shifts.
Lastly, prof. Hibberd teaches the Media Economics and Policy course that examines key economic and policy issues across different media industries. The course covers many issues including international trade, business strategies, pricing policies, competition and owner concentration as they affect media firms and industries.
Professor Hibberd has also been Principal Investigator in several internationally funded teaching and research projects such as the UK and India Education Research Initiative investigating climate change and examining journalist training and education and capacity building in India.
Last for the top row we have Professor Bertil Cottier, who teaches the Communication Law lecture. The course is divided into four modules that deepen the knowledge about legal resources on different areas of communication: media law, protection of reputation, marketing law and intellectual property. The Media law module is mandatory for students enrolled in the Master in Media Management. To complete the full 3 ECTS required, the students must choose another of the modules offered; the remaining modules can be chosen as electives.
The course tackles topics such as freedom of press, rights and obligations of journalists, information duties of companies and how to tackle attacks through communication, rules of advertising, copyright and much more.
Professor Cottier is the main teacher of Communication Law at USI and also teaches law related courses in Lausanne and Neuchatel. Furthermore, he is the co-director of the Medialex magazine, a Swiss magazine about communication law, and sui-generis magazine, a Swiss online law review.
Professor Zhang teaches The Culture of Media & Technology Companies, and the module aims at theorizing the concept of Corporate Culture and outline the trajectory of the development of this field of study, while introducing the key elements of Corporate Culture and offering students a framework to understand managing culture as a key dimension of corporate performance.
The course also Investigates case studies from different media and technology companies to help students to familiarize the state-of-the-art in culture management and its opportunities and limitations.
Developing a critical understanding of globalization in the media & technology industries and the challenges of international interaction of today’s business environment.
Professor Zhang is also the coordinator of the Master in Media Management at and she has also co-funded the Europe-China Dialogue: Media and Communication Studies Summer School in cooperation with the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University.
Lastly, we have Professor Luca M. Visconti and Professor Roberta de Sanctis, and they both teach the Orthodox and Critical Perspectives in Marketing course.
The course assumes students’ familiarity with the notion of marketing and what a marketing plan is about. Our university offers a possibility to acquire these notions in the Marketing tutorial course, before our Master programmes’ formal start.
Said marketing background is however too narrow, since: it conceives of marketing as a science, leading to normative and merely profit-oriented implications, both in theoretical and managerial terms. In order to overcome such a limited marketing vision, the professors aim at contrasting established (i.e. orthodox) and emerging (i.e. critical) perspectives on marketing, which helps problematize marketing objectives, outcomes, and publics, questioning the sense and the implications of companies’ customer orientation in times of digitalisation, complexification, and intensification of company-stakeholders relationships,
complementing the typical marketing funnel approach (as illustrated by the marketing plan) with a customer journey approach, and providing students with hands-on marketing experience, by means of a live case with a company.
Professor Visconti is Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society. His research inspects the intersections of consumption, markets, and culture (Consumer Culture Theory). In particular, his work focuses on branding, luxury, storytelling, market vulnerability, and wellbeing. His work appears in high-ranked journals (Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Management, Marketing Theory, etc.), books, and book chapters.
Professor De Sanctis is part of the Institute of Marketing and Communication Management (IMCA) at USI and professor at SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan.
