MEVIT4616 ¨C 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

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

Students enrolled in other Master`s Degree Programmes 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.

Obligatory qualifying assignments:

This course has obligatory qualifying assignments:

1. Attendance to a minimum of 75% of the seminars
2. 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.

Both the minimum attendance and the presentation are mandatory, and must be passed in order to submit the term paper/exam at the end of the semester.

Obligatory activities and absence

It is the student's own responsibility to stay informed about the obligatory activities, comply with the requirements for attendance and to uphold?deadlines. Everyone must familiarize themselves with?the rules concerning obligatory activities at the Faculty of Humanities.?If you get ill or have other?valid?reasons for being absent from obligatory activities, you must?apply for a leave of absence?as soon as possible and?no later than the day of absence?or the deadline.?

Examination

The exam consists of a term paper of up to 10 pages of 2 300 characters without space.

The obligatory qualifying assignments 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
• 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.