This course on digital literacy and the challenges around digital environments has been designed to help you (1) explore, (2) code and (3) decode today’s digital world and cultures. Along with the online material available on Moodle, these course sessions (detailed below) should allow you to decode some of the major issues of the digital world by bringing together knowledge in history, sociology, political science and the sociology of sciences and technology. In addition, this course will include some practical work involving the manipulation of data, as well as methods for writing in digital formats. The main assignment of the course will involve using both of these skills (knowledge of digital cultures and practical skills involving digital technology) to carry out a digital exploration in groups of 3 to 4 students. More specifically, the aim of this work will be to conduct an investigation on a specific topic that you will define and to report on your investigation in a digital format (e.g. video, podcast, blog, etc.).

This first session will act mostly as an opportunity to understand the course’s content and expectations in terms of validation, to get familiar with the key topics of the course, as well as to start exploring what digital culture means and how it interacts with our use of the Internet and other digital tools. During the class, time will also be allocated for students to start thinking about digital explorations and constitute groups.

This session will cover the roots and history of the Internet and the digital world as we know it today. In the first half of the lecture, we will see the main principles underlying the structure of the web, as well as important trends in its uses. From the military to the hippie culture, and from hackers to the first online communities, you will learn about the main currents that have shaped the internet so far and what makes it a culture. In the second half, you will be presented with various digital tools to explore the digital world, that you will be able to mobilise in your digital explorations, as well as examples of how these tools have been used to identify trends and document digital phenomena online.

In this session, we will keep on exploring how the internet works, this time by delving a little bit further into its technicalities and important achievements. During this class, you will learn how the internet is structured, as well as the main technical principles that support it. Where do hyperlinks come from? How is knowledge organised online? What do http, https, and html mean? How is content saved on the Internet? Further, we will analyse how the notion of “common good” structures some of the most important parts of the web, and discuss how this ideal of sharing knowledge openly is often conflicting with the increasing influence of commercial actors. Finally, we will explore questions about the “digital divide”, access to the Internet, as well as about how users of the Internet and uses of the Internet are socially situated.

From Occupy Wall Street to #MeToo, and from Friendster to TikTok, technology keeps on transforming the way we connect, organise, inform and express ourselves. From the participatory culture of the web 2.0, which challenged long-established gatekeepers of authoritative information, to social networks’ algorithms, the internet is full of obstacles and affordances to personal and public communication. While some claim there is no longer a separation between online and the real world, the blurring of boundaries of our digital selves opens up avenues for reflection on who we are online and what communities we belong to. In the first part, this session will explore these topics, and discuss our digital identity online and how we mobilise digital public spaces to express and document ourselves. Then, you will have some time to work on your digital exploration and ask for feedback.

Often listed as some of the Internet’s main issues, disinformation and the creation of filter bubbles have been at the heart of many controversies in the last decade. Yet, many empirical works challenge the notion of filter bubble, and while disinformation attempts are relatively easy to document and analyse, their effect on democracy remains difficult to understand in full. In the first part of this session, we will briefly cover these themes by presenting the concepts of disinformation, filter bubble and balkanisation of society. Then, we will discuss how empirical and theoretical works challenge these notions. In the second part, you will be presented with some tools you can use to document your online explorations and discuss their advantages and drawbacks given the topic at stake.

Big data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence (AI) are keywords of our times, fostering as much fascination as fear. But what do these terms really mean? How do they work? With the rise of the internet, and the possibility to track most of our moves online, one may think of as many dangers as potential uses to our data. Yet behind this promise lay some challenges: data deluge, overvaluation, algorithmic discrimination and biases, surveillance, etc. In this session, we will delve into what is hiding behind the words “big data” and “artificial intelligence”, and question the obsession of companies and institutions to collect data. We will also argue about the possibilities and the risks associated with artificial intelligence.

This penultimate session will briefly address some major issues about Internet and AI governance, and offer discussions about these questions. After having seen some of the uses, and consequences of the web, one question that remains is to understand who, or what governs the internet. Reviewing some legal cases from U.S. Case Law, we will look into existing frameworks to regulate online environments, as well as discuss their use in practice, and ethical components, with a focus on data management. In the second part of the lecture, we will focus on the regulation of AI, taking again as examples cases from U.S. Case Law.

During this final session, we will wrap up and summarise the main topics addressed in the course. Each group will then briefly present their digital explorations, followed by some feedback from the instructor or from other students. These presentations will not serve as an evaluation exercise and will not be used for grading. Their aim is rather to help all groups get some final feedback on their exploration as well as present the topics of study of each group to the rest of the class.