Module Directory

This module will situate digital media within the context of dynamic social interactions in a complex and rapidly changing world. Students will therefore be encouraged to develop a critical understanding of the role being played by human-machine relationships in processes of contemporary cultural change. In order to do so, we will undertake a sustained critical engagement with the era of personalised media consumption currently being shaped through the use of personal computers, social networking, digital telephony, electronic music and digital television.

Students will be encouraged to evaluate the most recent developments in media technologies and to interrogate the various uses and practices that surround them from a wide-ranging sociological perspective. As such, the module introduces students to a broad range of social phenomena arising across the globe through the application and conceptualisation of digital technologies – from the sociology of the virtual body to the rise of cybercrime and identity theft, from the utopian ideals of virtual democracy to the Orwellian nightmare of the surveillance society, from the free software movement to the pleasures of online shopping.

The aims of this module are:

• to explore the questions:
  
  
  
  • What is the relationship between computer mediated communication and the social?
  
  
  • How have radical tech cultures shaped contemporary society?
  
  
  • What are the implications of ‘digital lifestyles’ for the worlds of work and leisure in the 21st century?
  
  
  • What are the key disjunctures/continuities between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ media and wider social systems?
  
  
  • What is at stake for all of us in the debates surrounding electronic media?• What is the ‘information society’?
  
  
  
  

Students will also be introduced to a broad range of related theories and concepts:

• Convergence


• Interactivity


• Technological Determinism


• Virtual Reality


• Cybernetics


• The Network Society


• Big Data


• Internet of Things


• Digital Capitalism


• The Public Sphere


• Post-Truth


• Surveillance

The course explores such questions as:

What is the relationship between computer mediated communication and the social world?

What are the implications of ‘digital lifestyles’ for the worlds of work and leisure in the 21st century?

What are the key disjunctures/continuities between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ media and wider social systems?

What is at stake for all of us in the debates surrounding electronic media?

What is the ‘information society’?

Students will also be introduced to a broad range of related theories and concepts:

Post-industrialism
Informatisation
Virtual reality
The network society

Syllabus:Autumn Term 

• Topic 1 – week 2 Module introduction: Digital Society


• Topic 2 - week 3 From Post-Industrialism to the Network Society


• Topic 3 - week 4 Digital Capitalism and the Information Divide


• Topic 4 - week 5 Data Surveillance and Governmentality


• Topic 5 - week 6 From E-Democracy to Democracy Hacked


• Topic 6 - week 7 Open Source Intelligence in A Post-truth World


• Topic 7 - week 8 Alternative Politics and Digital Activism


• Topic 8 -week 9 Cyberculture, Posthumanism and the Virtual Body


• Topic 9 - week 10 Children, Online Risks and Digital Literacy


• Topic 10 - week 11 Essay Surgeries

Spring Term

• Topic 11 - week 16 Technology and Society: SCOT Meets ANT


• Topic 12 - week 17 What’s New about New Media?


• Topic 13 - week 18 Software Sorting of Everyday Life


• Topic 14 - week 19 Abuse Online: Trolling, Bullying and Revenge Porn


• Reading Week – week 20


• Topic 15 – week 21 New Frontiers in Digital Policing


• Topic 16 - week 22 Hacker Politics


• Topic 17 - week 23 Cyberlibertarianism and the Radical Right


• Topic 18 - week 24 Interactivity / Interfaces / Gaming


• Topic 19 - week 25 Essay Surgeries

Summer Term

• Presentation support sessions Weeks 31 and 32

Most modules in Sociology are divided into lectures of around 50 minutes and a class of around 50 minutes. Some are taught as a 2hr seminar, and others via a 50-minute lecture and 2-hr lab. The lectures provide an overview of the substantive debates around the topic of the week, while the classes will give you the opportunity to reflect on your learning and actively engage with your peers to develop your understanding further.

The weekly lectures and classes will take place face-to-face. You are strongly encouraged to attend the classes as they provide an opportunity to talk with your class teacher and other students. The classes will be captured and available via Listen Again. However, if you want to gain the most you can from these classes it is very important that you attend and engage. Please note that the recording of classes is at the discretion of the teacher.

Please note that you should be spending up to eight hours per week undertaking your own private study (reading, preparing for classes or assignments, etc.) on each of your modules (e.g. 32 hours in total for four 30-credit modules).