MEVIT4616 – Internet, Self and Society
Course content
We will develop an overview of the wider consequences of digital media - for our senses of selfhood, subjectivity and identity, as well as society more generally (including its cultural and political dimensions).
We will learn to conjoin both theories and empirical findings from various fields to illuminate three core questions:
- Who am I?
- How do I become a social being and sustain social relationships?
- And how do we as social beings construct - and find ourselves constructed by - diverse social, cultural, political and economic?institutions, arrangements and possibilities?
Learning outcome
Knowledge
Students are to develop a critical understanding of a range of theories from Media and Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy and how these illuminate:
- How diverse media technologies and our uses of them interact with diverse notions and emphases of subjectivity, identity and selfhood.
- What role digital, networked media play in shaping historical and contemporary understandings of social relationships (such as friendship, love and sexuality, spirituality, privacy, political contestation and conflict).
- How our uses of and relationships with - as well as in - media come to play a formative role in shaping both the psychic and the social.
Skills
Students will learn:
- to assess relevant existing theories and approaches in the fields of Internet and digital media studies as well as subjectivity and selfhood.
- to carry out a shorter piece of research (term paper) along the lines of the course’s academic orientations in relative independence.
General Competence
Students:
- will acquire the general competence of writing scholarly about digital media, the self, subjectivity and society.
- will be able to analyze relevant academic materials within adjacent fields.
- will be able to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in the course to new areas.
- will be able talk about and contribute to academic questions, analyses and findings in the field of digital media and internet studies as well as related fields.
Admission to the course
This course is for students admitted to Media and Communication Studies (master) (being phased out) and?Politisk kommunikasjon (master).
Students enrolled in other Master's Degree Programmes (from outside of the Department of Media and Communication) can, on application, be admitted to the course if this is cleared by their own study programme.
If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.
Teaching
Coursework will consist of lectures conjoined with seminar discussions. We will run nine consecutive 3-hour meetings. Each meeting will consist of lecture parts followed by seminar discussions and applications.
The 3-hour time frame per session will allow for an active and lively exchange between the students and the course convener, as well as a cooperative and in-depth work process.
The lecture parts will highlight important principles, arguments and other relevant aspects of the curriculum; the accompanying seminar parts will focus on discussions and additional perspectives on the texts, in part as developed and presented by the students.
Students are expected to read and make careful notes on the curriculum and other relevant texts. Such notes will then be useful resources for both in-class discussion and presentations, as well as for the term paper.
Compulsory activities:
This course has the following compulsory activities
- Attendance to a minimum of 75% of the seminars
- Presentation of one of the course readings: The presentation will be based on a text from the curriculum in class during the course; this presentation will be scheduled at the beginning of the course.
The compulsory activities will be assessed as approved/not approved. Approval of the activities is a prerequisite for being allowed to sit for the examination.??
If you get ill or have other valid reasons for not being able to attend class, you must apply for valid absence and/or postponed time for the presentation. The course teacher can assign a different task to compensate for missed attendance.?
Examination
The exam consists of a term paper of up to 10 standard pages (of 2300 characters without spaces).
The compulsory activities must be passed in order to submit the term paper/exam.
Language of examination
You may write your examination paper in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail. Read more about the grading system.
More about examinations at UiO
- Use of sources and citations
- How to use AI as a student
- Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
- Withdrawal from an exam
- Illness at exams / postponed exams
- Explanation of grades and appeals
- Resitting an exam
- Cheating/attempted cheating
You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.