Digital Media

The world is online; so are we directly, or indirectly. Tremendous changes in technology have changed the world we live in many ways. The course critically engages with the internet, new media and digital technologies, and the roles they play in contemporary society, culture, business, politics, the arts and everyday life. Our online and offline worlds integrate and at times disintegrate in myriad ways. In this context it becomes important to explore the limits and possibilities of technology in dealing with the challenges faced by respective societies and the world at large. Throughout the course we look at the interplay between emerging media technologies and culture, information, communication, knowledge, identities and power. We shall try and understand the factors that determine how new technologies are created, travel and are consumed by specific cultures. The course looks at - amongst others - the following themes: World Wide Web, Digital Culture, social media, online identities, virtual communities, theories of technology and culture, digital research, digital counter-culture, digital resistances and digital culture in the 21st century. The course encourages the use of the diverse interpretive and representational media: academic texts, documentary and feature films, literary writings, web sites and other media.

As for the objectives of the course, they could be summed up as follows:

To introduce the concept of digital culture

To explore how the internet has shaped communication

To provide a theoretical framework to understand media communication, internet and culture

To investigate virtual communities, identities and resistances

To understand the phenomenon of social media and its relation to other media