The course is structured around readings, short lectures, related in-class activities, team work, discussions, and the occasional screening of film and/or video excerpts.
The following schedule provides a general overview of the topics and themes that we will cover throughout the course. Specific details and additional readings will be revealed/assigned on a weekly basis.
Please note that a Moodle Page will be used as support to share updates and news, to collect assignments, to archive readings and other course materials.
Please note that your papers may be submitted to Turnitin (plagiarism detection software).
Week 1:
Introduction: What’s ‘new’ about Digital Media?
The Process Of Remediation
Digitalization
Readings: Baym, N. (2010). “Personal connection in the digital age”, Polity, pp. 1 – 12
Bolter, Jay David, and Grusin, Richard, “Remediation”, Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology 4, 3 (1996 Fall)
Week 2:
History of the Internet and the World Wide Web
Reading: Castells, M. (2002). The Internet galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, business, and society. Oxford University Press. (Chapter 1 and chapter 2)
Suggested reading: Curran, James, “The internet of history: rethinking the internet's past”, in Misunderstanding the Internet, eds. James Curran, Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 48-84.
Internet of the Things
Reading: Dueling Realities, The Atlantic, 2015
Week 3:
Hypertext
Interface
Readings:
Johnson, S. (1997). Interface culture: How new technology transforms the way we create and communicate. Basic Books., pp. 11-25
Carl Therrien, “Interface.” John Hopkins Dictionary of Digital Media
Week 4:
Identity management and self presentation
Reading: Nancy Baym, “Personal connection in the digital age”, Polity, 2010 (112-141)
Suggested reading: Livingstone, S. (2008). Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New media & society, 10(3), 393-411.
Socially Mediated Publicness
Reading: boyd d. (2010). Making sense of privacy and publicity – transcription of the talk.
Week 5
Time and Space + group project guidelines
Reading: Castells et. al. (2007). The Space of Flows, Timeless Time, and Mobile Networks, MIT Press
Project work
Week 6:
Project work
Project work (in-depth interview trial)
Week 7:
Review
Midterm
Screening: Black Mirror
Reading: David Elson, “Artificial Intelligence.” John Hopkins Dictionary of Digital Media
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Week 8:
The rise of networked individualism and the network society
Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, Networked. pp. 3 -20 and 34-50 (2012)
The Participatory culture and the Long Tail
Reading: J. Burgess and J. Green, YouTube, chapter 1: “How You Tube Matters” pp. 1-14 (2009).
March 10 : in-depth interview due
Week 9:
Screening: Generation Like
Google Algorithms
Reading: Battelle, J. (2005). The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (153-166) Penguin
Week 10:
Living in the 'filter bubble'.
Reading: Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. Penguin UK.
The Social media society and its critics
Lovink, Geert, “Introduction”, “Chapter I”, in Social Media Abyss: critical Internet culture and the force of negation, (Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2016), 1-25.
Week 11:
Digital media and politics
Readings:
M. Castells (2007). Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society, International Journal of Communication 1, 238-266
Joss Hands, “Politics and New Media.” John Hopkins Dictionary of Digital Media
Social media and political participation
Readings:
Shirky, Clay (2011). The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change, Foreign Affairs90.1 (Jan/Feb 2011): 28-I.
Malcom Gladwell (2010). Small Change. Why the revolution will not be tweeted, The New Yorker, Annals of Innovation October 4
Week 12:
The sharing culture
Reading: Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press, pp. 1 -16
Working and living in the sharing economy
Readings:
Trebor Scholz (2014). The Politics of the Sharing Economy
Natasha Singer (2014). In the Sharing Economy, Workers find both Freedom and Uncertainty
Suggested reading: Axel Rosenblat, The Truth About How Uber’s App Manages Drivers, Harvard Business Review, 2016
Week 13:
The Hacker culture
Readings:
Gabriella Coleman, “Hackers”, 2013
danah boyd, “Hacking the Attention Economy”, Medium, 5 January 2017
Project work presentation
Week 14:
Project work presentation