Course - Digital Cultures - KULT1101
Digital Cultures
About
About the course
Course content
This course is about internet culture and how our lives are mediated through platforms, algorithms and artificial intelligens (AI). Central in this course is to understand online practises, communities and cultures as shaped by both technology and culture. The goal is to strenghten your critical perspective on the present by increasing the understanding and knowledge for how digital infrastructure shape trends, self-understandings, politics and community.
At another level, the course sheds light on different internet visions; from internet as a democratizing force to internet as a waste of time, in order to show how technologies are shaped both technologically and culturally. By doing this, the course highlights technology (platforms, algorithms and AI) but also users and media narratives and interpretations of them.
The goal is to develop tools for understanding our mediated present, and critically evaluate the role of digital technology in the development of new expressions, identities and relations. The course has a special interest in internet phenomena that are rejected as trivial or meaningless. In addition, we study such phenomena from a user perspective and how users develop new and unexpected forms of interaction and creativity.
The approach to digital cultures is sociotechnical and combine perspectives from Science and technology studies (STS) with internet studies in order to show how technology and society shape each other.
Learning outcome
Students who complete this course have knowledge of:
- different narratives and visions related to the internet
- contemporary internet phenomena
- how digital infrastructures shape trends, identity, politics and community
- sociotechnical perspectives on internet culture
Students who complete this course have skills in:
- analyzing contemporary digital cultures in a sociotechnical perspective
- critically evaluating the role of technological and societal changes related to digital technology in new internet practices
- doing an independent analysis of digital cultures and articulate findings in the academic genre
Learning methods and activities
The course is organized as a net-based study based on video-lectures, literature and small assignments in the course's online modules, primarily multiple choice tasks.
Compulsory activities: small assignments in online modules + one written assignment
Compulsory assignments
- Written assignment
- Tasks i DIGIT
Further on evaluation
The assessment form is a home exam, which requires passing 1 written exercise and the completion of small assignments in online modules.
In the written assignment the student will analyse a small dataset collected by course coordinator. During the home exam the student will do a smaller data collection to form the basis for analysis.
Due to significant changes in the course from 2025, already passed mandatory assignments from earlier semesters will not automatically be valid. This has to be agreed upon with the one responsible for the course. Mandatory assignments are only valid in the semester the course is taken and in the following semester. Postponed exam is the following semester and is a home exam.
Recommended previous knowledge
None
Required previous knowledge
None
Course materials
Will be given at the start of the course.
Subject areas
- Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture
- Science and Technology Studies
- Social Studies
- Social Science