Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/University of Ontario Institute of Technology/New Media Theory and Practice (Fall 2014)/Course description

The digital networking technologies exemplified by the Internet are no longer news. They are restructuring the global political economy of communications. The economics of news production is being disrupted. Individuals across the world are fueling social media technologies with user-generated content, even at the expense of their own privacy and speech protections. Digital divides are growing as well as evolving as the material difference between those with and without access to information grows. Popular online intermediaries like Google and Facebook are monetizing their gatekeeping market positions, taking advantage of ‘big data’ and becoming the new conglomerates of the global communications industry. Across the world, mobile phones and Internet platforms are empowering a generation and have been credited with aiding revolutions. This course seeks to explore several questions in light of these changes:


 * What are some of the major theoretical questions preoccupying digital media and ICT scholars today?
 * To what extent are ICTs changing things for the better? For the worse?
 * What roles do the major players (industry, government, NGOs, the media, the public) have in ensuring a net benefit?
 * What can digital activism do to effect change?

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