FS20220

It has become equally significant to understand individual media users in specific social and cultural contexts as it is to understand owners, designers and regulators of the media. Digital Media and Everyday Experiences examine the uses and social consequences of the internet, social media, games and virtual reality. It analyses how digital technologies are socially shaped, reshaped, experienced and consumed. The module explores the dynamic interaction between the ‘logics’ and values of new and old media and the enduring cultural norms that shape the processes of localisation, appropriation, and domestication. During the module, students will develop an appreciation of the range of experiences affected by digital media, including the increasing expansion of life online, the growing intimate relations between life online and off and global divisions of labour. Students will investigate daily routines that often go unnoticed in the discussion of media such as media devices and digital objects, AI value chain, e-waste, digital economy and racial/gender bias in algorithms. Throughout, the module will be attentive to issues of gender, race, sexuality, and other categories of sameness and difference related to media use.