Biol 102

Communication 120/220

Digital Media in Society

Fall Quarter, 2012

Lectures: Tu/Th 9:00-10:15, Room 300-300

Sections TBA

Professor Fred Turner

TA’s: Ben Allen, Mathias Crawford, Andreas Katsanevas

Office: 436 McClatchy Hall

Office Hours: TBA

E-mail: fturner@stanford.edu

Course Goals:

The last fifty years have brought us an astonishing array of digital technologies and with them, a bewildering variety of new media forms. Online social networking, multi-player online games, blogs, Wikis, micro-movies for cell phones – together, many argue, these and other new media genres are reshaping our understandings of how we live and work and of what it means to be human.

In this class we will explore these claims as we survey contemporary theories of the impact of digital media on the individual, the economy and the state. Do digital media fundamentally alter the nature of the human self, as many have claimed? How do they alter the landscape? Our notions of what it means to be “at home”? The ways we do business? The ways we govern ourselves?

To answer these questions, we’ll explore the dynamics of digital media and at the same time, the ways those dynamics shape – and have been shaped by – ongoing processes of social change. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between technological developments and two other large-scale historical changes: the rise of the post-industrial economy and of postmodern culture. By the end of the course, you should have a sense of how these large scale social and cultural shifts have shaped our uses of digital media and vice versa. You should be able to critique and synthesize the ways others have characterized the social impact of digital media. And most important of all, you should have begun to build your own theories of how digital media and social life interact.

Readings:

Required readings are available at the bookstore and on line.

You should buy the following books:

Goldsmith, Jack L., and...