Programme

Dominance has never been achieved solely through the recognition and display of superior technological or military might. Knowledge is power, and it exercises its influence, as Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci put it, in the field of cultural hegemony, establishing the boundaries of what knowledge is and is not. Information, education and cultural and scientific production form the deep level of geopolitical interaction. Now, for the first time in history, this complex set of ideologies, practices and interchange has converged into a unified medium of production, access and diffusion: the web and its tools. From Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013 to the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal in 2018, from the pandemic to the contemporary war on fake news, the web and its sister technologies have become the ground on which to exercise control over politics and health, train new generations, disseminate scientific results, influence economic choices and challenge social norms. The cultural, aesthetic, social, juridical, economic and other structures that characterized the history of humanity up to the early years of the 21st century have been swept away by a new subject-object: the empire of the platforms.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to these issues, trying to develop a critical awareness of the use of digital tools and to stimulate active participation in the revolutionary processes we are experiencing today.

Our main working tool will be the volume by Mario Ricciardi, "Communico. Linguaggi, immagini, algoritmi" (Rome, TAB Edizioni, 2021). Students will have to write weekly responses on the assigned readings and engage in both online and offline discussions guided by the instructor.

Core Documentation

Students who will not able to come to class can still take the final exam, but are required to study the volume by Nick Couldry, Sociologia dei nuovi media. Teoria sociale e pratiche mediali digitali, Milano-Torino, Pearson, 2015 (English edition available).
They will have also to choose one volume from the following list (please note that the colloquium on the texts will be in Italian!):

1) Shoshana Zuboff (2019), Il capitalismo della sorveglianza. Il futuro dell'umanità nell'era dei nuovi poteri, Roma, LUISS.
2) Gabriele Balbi e Paolo Magaudda (2014), Storia dei media digitali. Rivoluzioni e continuità. Roma-Bari, Laterza.
3) Sergio Bellucci (2019), L'industria dei sensi. Roma, Harpo.
4) Teresa Numerico (2021), Big data e algoritmi. Prospettive critiche. Roma, Carocci.
5) Guillame Pitron (2019), La guerra dei metalli rari. Il lato oscuro della transizione digitale. Roma, LUISS.


Some of these texts (for example 1) are available also in English.
For more information please contact the instructor.

Type of delivery of the course

The course is divided in two parts. In the first part students will engage with a number of readings on authors, works and themes that will assigned and discussed during the class. Students will send their reading responses to a mailing list that will be created at the beginning of the semester. In the second part of the course students will deal with practical exercises and hands-on sessions in the Faculty's computing lab.

Type of evaluation

For students attending at least 70% of classs (50/64 hours), and who have diligently carried out all class activities during the semester, the final exam will be a written questionnaire consisting of three open questions based on the volume edited by Ricciardi (cf. Mario Ricciardi, "Communico", TAB, 2021). Practical sessions during the course consist of: 1) individual comments published on the online group or mailing list; 2) group research that will be assigned during the second part of the course. Each of these activities will be marked and assessed separately, and the final mark will be the result of an overall evaluation. For example: Activity I: 28; Activity II: 25; Activity III: 30; final written questionnaire: 27. Final mark: 27.5.