Dr Leslie Haddon, STC.S104

Available for students on the following programmes: MSc Global Media and Communications (with Fudan or USC), MSc Media, Communication and Development, MSc Media and Communications, MSc Media and Communications (Research) and MSc Media and Communications (Media and Communication Governance). Other students may attend subject to numbers, their own degree regulations and at the discretion of the teacher responsible.

This course is capped at 30 places.

The course aims to explore how information and communication technologies are experienced in everyday life. This includes examining how ICTs are socially shaped, through looking at current theoretical frameworks as well as historical and contemporary examples. The course covers such matters as the domestication of ICTs, their place in social networks and their implications for time and space. Finally, a range of potential social consequences are considered, from the specific implications for parent-child relationships to broader questions about the extent to which these technologies are changing social life.

Lecture (one-hour) x 10 LT; seminar (one-hour) x 10 LT

All students are expected to complete advance reading, prepare seminar presentations, and submit one essay of 1,500 words.

Haddon, L. (2004) Information and Communication Technologies in Everyday Life: A Concise Introduction and Research Guide, Berg; Ling, R. (2004) The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone's Impact on Society, Morgan Kaufmann; Wellman, B. & Haythornthwaite, C. (Eds) (2002) The Internet in Everyday Life, Oxford University Press; Bakardjieva, M. (2005) Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life, Sage; Katz, J. & Rice, R. (2002) Social Consequences of Internet Use, MIT Press; Berker, T, Hartmann, M., Punie, Y and Ward, K. (Eds) (2005) Domestication of Media and Technologies, Open University Press; Ito, M., Matsuda, M. & Okabe, D. (Eds) (2005) Personal, Portable, Pedestrian, Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, MIT Press; Buckingham D. and R. Willett, Digital Generations (Eds) (2006) Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media, Erlbaum; Ito, M. (2010) Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA; Van Dijk, J. (2005) The Deepening Divide: Inequality in the Information Society, Sage, London; Green, N. and Haddon, L. (2009) Mobile Communications: An Introduction to New Media, Oxford, Berg.

A written assignment of not more than 3,000 words.