Digital Convergence and Information Services

IS418

Half/ full unit

Half

Prof J. Kallinikos, Room NAB 3.24

The course provides an overview of the theories and models associated with the diffusion of the internet, media convergence and the development of large cross-corporate communication infrastructures. An essential aim of the course is to advance the understanding of the background developments against which information has increasingly emerged as carrier of new economic ventures and a crucial means for developing new organizational and business offerings. The course also aims to provide an account of alternative models of producing and distributing services (for example, open source software, wikipedia) that do not any more need to rely on the mediating role which markets have normally assumed. These models both contrast and complement market-mediated ventures.

The course entails the following thematic units:

• Information Infrastructures and the Growth of the Internet
• Media Convergence: Trends, Models, Practices
• Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing
• Managing Web-based Information Services
• Organizing, Aggregating and Editing Information
• Traditional Models of Organization and Production
• Social Production and Open Networks
• New Forms of Governance and Knowledge Production
• Social Computing

Lent term

Lectures

10 x 2 hours

Lent term

Classes

10 x 2 hours

Students will complete one formative essay. The assessed project essay will also be supported by workshops in which formative feedback will be given.

• Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press also available as open access in www.benkler.com
• Carr, N. G. (2008) The Big Switch: Rewiring the World: From Edison to Google. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
• Dreyfus, H. (2001) On the Internet. London: Routledge.
• Kallinikos, J. (2006) The Consequences of Information: Institutional Implications of Technological Change. Cheltenham: Elgar.
• Morville, P. (2005) Ambient Findability. Cambridge: O’Reilly
• Weinberger, D. (2007) Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. New York: Times Books.

Further readings will be in a study pack of  journal articles, book chapters and web publications.

A three hour exam in the Summer Term.