Undergraduate Seminar (298-0-70)

Topic

Interpreting Digital Artifacts

Instructors

Heather Jaber

Meeting Info

Northwestern Qatar Room 2-257: Tues, Su 4:00PM - 5:15PM (AST)

Overview of class

Artifacts are the "stuff" that make up culture. This course approaches digital artifacts as cultural objects on the Internet which require retooled interpretive frameworks. We will answer questions like: What can search results tell us about power? How is Twitter a racial artifact? Why do user-generated videos of an event change the way it is understood. Digital media texts require approaches which recognize changes in practices of reading, analysis, and interpretation. At the same time, they are connected to historical forms like the bulletin board, the satellite image, and political cartoons in newspapers. This course therefore takes both a historical and semiotic approach to the study of digital media to situate the objects that we engage with daily—hashtags, selfies, search results, image filters, and memes—along a longer history of media forms. In doing so, it grapples with questions of epistemology—how we know what we know—prompted by global changes. By approaching digital artifacts in these ways, it shows how imaginaries of what they are shape our understandings of visibility, sociality, and power. The course will teach students how to conduct media critique, to peer review in class workshops, and to critically access changes in the digital media landscape.

Registration Requirements

Prerequisites: MIT 220-0

Open to sophomores and above, MIT majors only

Open for Cross-Registration

Satisfies Media & Politics Minor

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: NUQ: Seats are reserved for sophomores & above who have completed MIT 220-0 Registration is reserved for NU Qatar COMM students.