NEW MEDIA,
CULTURE & SOCIETY
1. COURSE OBJECTIVES
This course is designed to help students understand a broad array of histories, theories, and methods of understanding new media and their relation to our culture and society. Often, new media are considered to be the primary driving force of seemingly revolutionary social changes such as globalization, innovation, and economic development. This course will demonstrate that there are more complex cultural conditions that have shaped the current landscape of ‘new’ media, that all ‘old’ media were ‘new’ at some points in history, and that the new media as we know them now actually have quite a long history. This course aims to cultivate students’ analytical and critical skills to historicize and problematize the complex social context of new media as it relates to histories, aesthetics, politics, ecology, and economy. Based on the theoretical discussions, this course will guide students to reflect on contemporary issues regarding questions such as: “How do Facebook and Instagram affect the way in which I relate to myself and with others?” “How are Netflix and Youtube changing the ways media contents are produced and consumed?” “What is the creative industry?” “What are the environmental impacts of smartphones?” “How do we study communicative processes that take place without our consent or awareness?”
This course is open to students from all disciplines who wish to study ‘new’ media. This course does not assume a student’s familiarity with certain kinds of theories or topics in media studies. By the end of the term, I expect the students to master the key concepts of new media studies and to be able to apply those concepts in their everyday life.
2. COURSE MATERIAL
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McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill.
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Gitelman, L. (2006). Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. MIT Press.
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Maxwell, R., & Miller, T. (2012). Greening the Media. Oxford University Press.
3. WEEKLY TOPICS
Week 1. Introduction
Fuery, K. (2008). New Media: Culture and Image.
Week 2. New Media + Histories
Bolter, J. D. & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding new media. Introduction.
Gitelman, L. (2008). Always Already New: Media, history and the data of culture. Introduction.
Chun, W. H. (2011). Programmed Vision: Software and Memory.
Week 3. New Media + Aesthetics
Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Selected chapters.
Papastergiadis, N. (2005). Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and flows in contemporary art and culture.
Week 4. New Media + Self
Sauter, T. (2014). ‘What’s on your mind? Writing on Facebook as a tool for self-formation.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other.
Koopman, C. (2019). How We Became Our Data.
Week 5. New Media + Mobility
Hosokawa, S. (1984). The Walkman Effect.
Hemment, D. (2005). The Mobile Effect.
Week 6. New Media + Convergence
Jenkins, H. (2004). The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence.
Hay, J. & Couldry, N. (2011). Rethinking Convergence/Culture: An introduction.
Week 7. New Media + Creative Industry
Florida, R. (2001). The Rise of Creative Class. Introduction.
Davila, A. (2004). Marketable Neighborhood: Outdoor ads meet street art.
Ross, A. (2004) Dot.com urbanism.
Week 8. New Media + Labor
Qiu, J. L. (2014). Circuits of labour: A labour theory of the iPhone era.
McRobbie, A. (2018). Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. Introduction.
Week 9. New Media + Security
Rule, J. (1974). Private Lives and Public Surveillance: Social control in the computer age.
Andrejevic, M. & Burdon, M. (2015). Defining the sensor society.
Week 10. Spring Break
Week 11. New Media + Globalization
Massey, D. (1991). A Global Sense of Place.
Curran, J. & Park, M.J. (2000). Dewesternizing Media Studies. Introduction.
Flew, T. (2018). Understanding Global Media. 2nd Ed. Ch5. The changing geography of global media production.
Week 12. New Media + Ecology
Gabrys, J. (2013) Digital Rubbish: A natural history of electronics. Introduction.
Maxwell, R. & Miller, T. (2012). Greening the Media. Introduction.
Week 13. New Media + Social Change
Morozov, E. (2009). From Slacktivism to Activism.
Week 14. Writing Workshop + Peer Review Session
Week 15. Student presentations
Week 16. Final paper due to by Friday 8 PM