Digital Media Activism

This course will offer a critical introduction to digital media activism expanding across the world. There is today widespread enthusiasm about the potential of digital media to empower citizens and enable democratic participation. But recent events of manipulation and control by governments and market have also shown the limits of digital media activism. This course will offer students the opportunity to analyze the highly contested terrain of digital activism, and recognize that digital activism is not a uniform movement but a plurality of tactics and agendas. Rather than celebrating digital technologies as tools for activism applicable anywhere and anytime, the course will challenge the students to interrogate the various conditions that shape contention and claims to social justice. The students will also become familiar with higher order social theories as they illuminate the ways digital media intersect with political cultures. The course will combine theoretical readings with analysis of signature episodes such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street but also less known Internet activism in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Indonesia and other countries.

The course will have a combination of lectures, discussions, classroom activities and film watching, to simulate, in some measure, the promise and limits of digital activism. At the end of the course, students will apply theoretical insights to develop a social media campaign for social advocacy.

Grading

·      Class Participation and Questions: 15%

·      Final presentation on social media campaign: 40%

·      Final Paper with theoretical discussion on social media campaign: 45% (3000 words)