Dr Alison Powell

This course is available on the MSc in Media and Communications, MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society) and MSc in Media and Communications (Research). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is 'controlled access', meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted. If the course is oversubscribed, offers will be made via a random ballot process, with priority given to students with the course listed on their Programme Regulations. Whilst we do our best to accommodate all requests, we cannot guarantee you a place on this course.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students should apply via LSE for You without submitting a statement.

Please do not email the teacher with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place.

This course provides an historical, theoretical and methodological basis through which to assess the social and cultural transformations related to digital media infrastructures and related social practices. It focuses on the materiality and affordances of new media, as well as on the social transformations that have co-evolved, focusing on emerging media of the past, present and future. It critiques and questions the assumptions about the transformation of social and cultural life but also attempts to help students develop conceptual strategies beyond critique. Conceptual approaches draw from materialist studies of media and communication, as well as science and technology studies. Topics include but are not limited to: alternative and activist media and futures, the political economy and ecology of digital media, the politics of algorithms, remembering and forgetting, the anthroposcene, artificial intelligence, data and AI ethics.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the AT.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

Students will complete a 1500 word formative essay or creative proposal. They will also receive formative feedback on class participation and on a formative assignment.

• Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong and Thomas Keenan (2006) New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. London: Routledge.
• Hayles, N. Katherine (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Kitchin Rob and Dodge, Martin (2011) Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life.
• Lukers, Kristin (2007) Salsa Dancing into the Social sciences: Research in an age of info-glut. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Marvin, Carolyn (1989) When Old Technologies Were New. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Turner, Fred (2005) "Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community." Technology and Culture 46: 485-512.
• Turkle, Sherry (2011) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.
• Vaidhyanathan, Siva (2008) The Googlization of Everything (And why we should worry). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the WT.