This course is designed to help international affairs students to intelligently handle the fundamental issues of today's complicated world. Placing a strong emphasis on the media and its culture, the course will introduce patterns of global and local cultural changes in the post-Cold-War world and the assertion of national, ethnic and cultural identities. The study of journalistic methods, interests and ethics from various countries will teach students to approach international affairs issues from a sociological and anthropological perspective. Assigned to follow current events in newspapers and on the Internet, students will discover how the media defines and controls the content of its reporting, which in turn affects what people learn about their own lives as well as other places.