Introduction to Digital Media

This module introduces students to key issues, concepts and theories of digital media and cultures and forms the foundation for more detailed analyses of digital media in future years. The module encourages students to reflect on their own pre-existing communication practices and experiences together with their current engagement with digital media in order to extrapolate from such reflection the foundational characteristics and aspects of digital media, including interactivity, digitization, hyper textuality and the specific digital literacies involved. Sessions involve the critical analysis and discussion of reading materials, as well as practical exercises focused on specific examples from digital and social media. Students are encouraged to engage in personal reflection and collective discussion along the lines of the following questions: What is the specificity of digital media? How have communication practices changed with the introduction of digital technologies? Can you imagine a world without digital technologies and what would it look like? How are we changing, as individuals and societies, through our engagement with digital technologies? Are text-messaging, email, blogging and social networking new forms of writing? In what way is a Web page different from a printed page? What is the role of images in current communication practices? What does it mean to write for digital media or even to write software, and how is it different from writing an essay, a novel or poetry? Do revolutions in communication technologies (from the printed page to the Internet, from the radio to the podcast, from analogic imaging to digital imaging) always entail a radical transformation in how people understand themselves and their place in the world? The module examines these questions and modulates students’ experience by looking at a number of authors and texts, including sociological, philosophical, anthropological, and neurological theories.