Description: Lecture, four hours. Students question relationships with digital media and information society and explore how media and information communication technologies are improving society, strengthening democracy, and opening up opportunities for challenging hegemony and promoting social transformation. Problematization of social media and questioning of ways it is being used to surveil, capture data, spread hate, mislead, distract, and destabilize democracies. Students analyze media representations, question process of normalizing dominant ideologies, and create counter-hegemonic media messages. Combines theoretical foundations of cultural studies and critical pedagogy with practical applications of new digital media and technology, as well as traditional print-based means of communication. Exploration of media representations of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other identity markers. Students analyze and create media projects related to education. Letter grading.

Units: 4.0