MEVIT4616 ¨C Internet, Self and Society

Course content

We will develop an overview of the wider consequences of digital media - for our senses of selfhood, subjectivity and identity, as well as society more generally (including its cultural and political dimensions).

We will learn to conjoin both theories and empirical findings from various fields to illuminate three core questions:

• Who am I?
• How do I become a social being and sustain social relationships?
• And how do we as social beings construct - and find ourselves constructed by - diverse social, cultural, political and economic?institutions, arrangements and possibilities?

Learning outcome

Knowledge

Students are to develop a critical understanding of a range of theories from Media and Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy and how these illuminate:

• How diverse media technologies and our uses of them interact with diverse notions and emphases of subjectivity, identity and selfhood.
• What role digital, networked media play in shaping historical and contemporary understandings of social relationships (such as friendship, love and sexuality, spirituality, privacy, political contestation and conflict).
• How our uses of and relationships with - as well as in - media come to play a formative role in shaping both the psychic and the social.

Skills

Students will learn:

• to assess relevant existing theories and approaches in the fields of Internet and digital media studies as well as subjectivity and selfhood.
• to carry out a shorter piece of research (term paper) along the lines of the course¡¯s academic orientations in relative independence.

General Competence

Students:

• will acquire the general competence of writing scholarly about digital media, the self, subjectivity and society.
• will be able to analyze relevant academic materials within adjacent fields.
• will be able to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in the course to new areas.
• will be able talk about and contribute to academic questions, analyses and findings in the field of digital media and internet studies as well as related fields.

Admission to the course

Students enrolled in other Master's Degree Programmes (from outside of the Department of Media and Communication) can, on application, be admitted to the course if this is cleared by their own study programme.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.