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JOHN CABOT UNIVERSITY

COURSE CODE: "COM 311-2"
COURSE NAME: "Digital Media Culture"
SEMESTER & YEAR: Fall 2025
SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTOR: Valentina Tanni
EMAIL: [email protected]
 HOURS: MW 1:30 PM 2:45 PM
TOTAL NO. OF CONTACT HOURS: 45
CREDITS: 3
PREREQUISITES: Prerequisite: COM 220
OFFICE HOURS:
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course provides students with a number of theoretical approaches to critically assess how digital media function and their expanding and expansive role in contemporary culture. The course further investigates digital media convergence in order to develop a critical lexicon that can both chart its development and engage in intellectual interventions in its use within the transformations occuring in more traditional cultural forms such as television, film, popular music, print, and radio. Special emphasis will be placed on the specific cultural, political, economic, and social issues raised by digital media forms.
SUMMARY OF COURSE CONTENT:

The course will attempt at first to define the domain of Digital Media, proposing it as the amalgamation of different traditional media forms into new digitally based varieties. Subsequently the course will analyze the various forms which Digital Media has assumed and concentrate on the specific issues - cultural, political, economic, technological and social - that the various forms raise.
This is a lecture and discussion course. We will shift back and forth between discussing theoretical and practical issues in relation to digital media culture media and their relation to society. Lectures and discussions will be supported with several multimedia content. Students are strongly encouraged to propose their own choice of media material for the class.

Readings include texts by influential scholars and new media theorists such as (among others): Kate Crawford, Henry Jenkins, Lawrence Lessig, Lev Manovich, Trevor Paglen, Limor Shifman, Sadie Plant.

 

All reading materials will be available in digital format.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:

By the end of the course students will be able to:

1. understand and analyze the corresponding influences that traditional media and digital media are having upon each other.

2. understand and analyze how digital media use contributes to shape personal identities and social relationships.

3. recognize the influences that digital media is expressing in the cultural, social, economical and political spheres.

4. learn some key concepts such as hypertextuality, interactivity, remediation, web 2.0., digital extractivism, machine learning, and connect them to the use of digital media in everyday life.

5. advance one’s ability to produce qualitative research reports and reflection papers.
TEXTBOOK:
NONE
REQUIRED RESERVED READING:
NONE

RECOMMENDED RESERVED READING:
NONE
GRADING POLICY
-ASSESSMENT METHODS:
AssignmentGuidelinesWeight
Attendance & ParticipationParticipation includes doing the assigned readings and actively contributing to class discussions. 15%
Midterm examDetailed guidelines will be provided.35%
Final research paper & Oral presentationStudents are required to write a research paper related to the course material. Detailed guidelines to be provided.40%
Participation to 'Digital Delights &Disturbances' (DDD) lecture seriesStudents are required to attend 3 sessions of the lecture series. A detailed calendar with dates & event description will be provided.5%
Participation to DDD workshops Students will have to attend one of the workshops offered by the DDD lecture series and write a short reflection on it. Calendar will be provided at the beginning of the semester. 5%

-ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:
AWork of this quality directly addresses the question or problem raised and provides a coherent argument displaying an extensive knowledge of relevant information or content. This type of work demonstrates the ability to critically evaluate concepts and theory and has an element of novelty and originality. There is clear evidence of a significant amount of reading beyond that required for the course.
BThis is highly competent level of performance and directly addresses the question or problem raised.There is a demonstration of some ability to critically evaluatetheory and concepts and relate them to practice. Discussions reflect the student’s own arguments and are not simply a repetition of standard lecture andreference material. The work does not suffer from any major errors or omissions and provides evidence of reading beyond the required assignments.
CThis is an acceptable level of performance and provides answers that are clear but limited, reflecting the information offered in the lectures and reference readings.
DThis level of performances demonstrates that the student lacks a coherent grasp of the material.Important information is omitted and irrelevant points included.In effect, the student has barely done enough to persuade the instructor that s/he should not fail.
FThis work fails to show any knowledge or understanding of the issues raised in the question. Most of the material in the answer is irrelevant.
-ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS:
ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS AND EXAMINATION POLICY
You cannot make-up a major exam (midterm or final) without the permission of the Dean’s Office. The Dean’s Office will grant such permission only when the absence was caused by a serious impediment, such as a documented illness, hospitalization or death in the immediate family (in which you must attend the funeral) or other situations of similar gravity. Absences due to other meaningful conflicts, such as job interviews, family celebrations, travel difficulties, student misunderstandings or personal convenience, will not be excused. Students who will be absent from a major exam must notify the Dean’s Office prior to that exam. Absences from class due to the observance of a religious holiday will normally be excused. Individual students who will have to miss class to observe a religious holiday should notify the instructor by the end of the Add/Drop period to make prior arrangements for making up any work that will be missed. The final exam period runs until ____________
ACADEMIC HONESTY
As stated in the university catalog, any student who commits an act of academic dishonesty will receive a failing grade on the work in which the dishonesty occurred. In addition, acts of academic dishonesty, irrespective of the weight of the assignment, may result in the student receiving a failing grade in the course. Instances of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Dean of Academic Affairs. A student who is reported twice for academic dishonesty is subject to summary dismissal from the University. In such a case, the Academic Council will then make a recommendation to the President, who will make the final decision.
STUDENTS WITH LEARNING OR OTHER DISABILITIES
John Cabot University does not discriminate on the basis of disability or handicap. Students with approved accommodations must inform their professors at the beginning of the term. Please see the website for the complete policy.
SCHEDULE

PART I – NEW MEDIA, NEW WORLDVIEWS

 

 

Week 1. Introduction and Course Overview: Why Study Digital Culture?

 

Reading:
Charlie Gere, Digital Culture, 2002, introduction

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Updating to Remain the Same. Habitual New Media, 2017, introduction

Watching:
Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Message, Video, 1977

 

Week 2. Technology in History

Reading:

Jérôme Bourdon, Telepresence. Or, We Have Always Been Ghosts, from Cicero to Computers, 2021
Geert Lovink, The Anatomy of Zoom Fatigue, 2020
Langdon Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics?, 1980

Watching:

Face to Face, The PicturePhone, Video, 1970
Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Hole in Space, Video, 1980


Week 3. Old Media and New Media

Reading:
Lev Manovich, Principles of New Media, in The Language of New Media, 2001

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation, in Remediation, Understanding New Media, 2000

 

 

Week 4. A Brief History of the Computer and the Internet

Reading:

Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture, 1997, excerpt.
James Curran, The internet of history: rethinking the internet's past, in Misunderstanding the Internet, 2016
Shoshana Zuboff, The Discovery of Behavioral Surplus, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2018
Vladan Joler, New Extractivism. An assemblage of concepts and allegories, 2020

Watching:
William Gibson on the dawn of the Internet, Video, 1997
Fred Turner, From Counter Culture to Cyber Culture, Video, 2013
How the Internet Was Stolen, Video, 2022, excerpt.

 

Week 5. Interface and Hypertext

Reading:
Annette N. Markham, Metaphors Reflecting and Shaping the Reality of the Internet: Tool, Place, Way of Being, 2003
Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala, The Myth of Transparency, in Windows and Mirrors, 2003

Watching:
Werner Herzog, Lo and Behold, Documentary, 2016 - excerpt.

 

Week 6. Hacker Culture

Reading:
Steven Levy, The Hacker Ethic, in Hackers. Heroes of the Computer Revolution, 1984
Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, in Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture, 2016

Watching:
Hackers - Wizards of the Electronic Age, Documentary, 1985.


Week 7. Midterm


Midterm review and Exam.



PART II – PARTICIPATORY CULTURE

Week 8. Open Source and Creative Commons

Reading:
Richard Stallman, Why software should not have owners, 1994
Claire L. Evans, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, 2018, excerpt

Watching:
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, Documentary, 2014
Losing Lena, Documentary, 2019

 

Week 9. The rise of Web 2.0

Reading:
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2006, introduction
Participatory Culture in a Networked Era. A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce,
and Politics by Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd, 2015

Watching:
Henry Jenkins, The New Audience, Video, 2015

Week 10. Algorithmic Culture

 

Reading:
Tarleton Gillespie, The Relevance of Algorithms, 2013

Valentina Tanni, The Great Algorithm, 2022
Tiziano Bonin and Emiliano Treré, Algorithms of Resistance. The Everyday Fight against Platform Power, 2024, excerpt
Taina Bucher, The Multiplicity of Algorithms, in If... Then. Algorithmic Power and Politics, 2018

 

Watching:
Ben Grosser, Go Rando, Video, 2017

How 'algospeak' is changing language, Video, 2025

 

Week 11. Memes & Viral Content

Reading:
Limor Shifman, Defining Internet Memes, in Memes in Digital Culture, 2013
Valentina Tanni, To a Person with a Smartphone Everything Looks Like a Meme, 2021
Taylor Lorenz, Is Virality Dead?, 2024

PART III – DATA EXTRACTIVISM AND AI


Week 12. Computer vision and Artificial Intelligence

Reading:
Will Knight, The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI, 2017

Watching:
Coded Bias, Documentary, 2020

Memo Atken, Learning to see, Video, 2017

 

Week 13. New Extractivism and Digital Labour

Reading:
Kate Crawford, Vladan Joler, Anatomy of an AI System, 2018.
Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, 2021, excerpt

 

Watching:
 Alan Warburton, The Wizard of AI, 2023

 

Week 14. Wrap up/Final presentations


* The contents of this outline are subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.