MC409      Half Unit
Media, Technology and Everyday Life

This information is for the 2017/18 session.

Teacher responsible

Dr Leslie Haddon

Availability

This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Data, Networks and Society, MSc in Media and Communications, MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society), MSc in Media and Communications (Research), MSc in Media, Communication and Development and MSc in Strategic Communications. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

In order to accommodate academic staff research leave and sabbaticals, and in order to maintain smaller seminar group sizes, this course is capped, meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted.

Course content

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.

Teaching

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the MT.

Formative coursework

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

Indicative reading

Haddon, L. (2004) Information and Communication Technologies in Everyday Life: A Concise Introduction and Research Guide, Berg; Bakardjieva, M. (2005) Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life, Sage; 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; 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; boyd, d. (2014) It's Complicated.The Social Lives of Networked Teenagers,Yale University Press, New Haven; Byam, N. (2015) Personal Communications in a Digital Age, Cambridge, Polity.

Assessment

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the LT.

Student performance results

(2013/14 - 2015/16 combined)

Classification % of students
Distinction 15.8
Merit 41.1
Pass 42.1
Fail 1.1

Teachers' comment

We are bombarded with claims about how technologies like the internet are changing everyday life - this course provides the tools to evaluate those arguments.

Students' comments

"I really like the way in which each topic was historicised to gain a better understanding of the process."

Key facts

Department: Media & Communications

Total students 2016/17: 51

Average class size 2016/17: 17

Controlled access 2016/17: Yes

Lecture capture used 2016/17: Yes (MT)

Value: Half Unit

Guidelines for interpreting course guide information

Personal development skills

  • Self-management
  • Team working
  • Communication