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IR220: Digital Platforms: Power, Politics and Resistance

Subject Area: International Relations, Government, Psychology and Society

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Course details

  • Department
    Department of Media and Communications
  • Application code
    SS-IR220
Dates
Session oneNot running in 2024
Session twoNot running in 2024
Session threeOpen - 29 Jul 2024 - 16 Aug 2024

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Applications are open

We are accepting applications. Apply early to avoid disappointment.

Overview

Digital platforms—like those owned by Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Baidu, or Tencent—now shape and manipulate our everyday digital (and non-digital) lives. Their capacity to shape economic, social, and political life is seen across virtually all sectors, including transport, education, communication, and healthcare.

This platformisation of society generates extensive social damage, as witnessed in the past few years by dramatic episodes of disinformation and media manipulation, algorithmic amplification of hate, and massive data breaches. Around the world citizens, politicians, and activists are holding platforms to account and demanding a change to the concentration of power in digital platforms; these demands are based in the view that platform power is at the centre of a crisis of democracy, and a crisis in the individual and collective ability to communicate and make sense of the world.

This course begins with these received crises but looks both forwards and backwards, to understand how we got here and where we are going. Through this course, you will gain access to research-led lectures and the latest scholarship to properly understand how digital platforms work and the roles they play in society. You will apply this knowledge to case studies to understand how platforms are shaped and where citizens might intervene in their governance. You will engage in debates to think about how to critically engage with technological power and to mitigate the social harms of platforms.

Key information

Prerequisites: At least one introductory course in either social science (e.g. political science, international relations, sociology, economics), history or law. 

Level: 200 level. Read more information on levels in our FAQs

Fees: Please see Fees and payments

Lectures: 36 hours

Classes: 18 hours

Assessment: An essay of 2,000 words (50%) and an exam (50%)

Typical credit: 3-4 credits (US) 7.5 ECTS points (EU)

Please note: Assessment is optional but may be required for credit by your home institution. Your home institution will be able to advise how you can meet their credit requirements. For more information on exams and credit, read Teaching and assessment

Is this course right for you?

This course is ideal if you are looking to combine a social and technological understanding of digital platforms with an overview of the harms they generate and the civic response to these harms.

If you are targeting a career in the technology sector, in communication, advertising & journalism, or in public policy, this course is for you.

Outcomes

  • Develop a deeper understanding of the sociotechnical basis of digital platforms
  • Situate digital platforms within the technical and cultural history of the internet
  • Review how the platform model differs across various cultural and political contexts
  • Gain a comparative view of different regulatory frameworks for platform power
  • Engage in regulatory experiments to imagine a fairer platform society

Content

Faculty

The design of this course is guided by LSE faculty, as well as industry experts, who will share their experience and in-depth knowledge with you throughout the course.

Dylan Mulvin

Dr Dylan Mulvin

Assistant Professor

Jean-Christophe Plantin

Dr Jean-Christophe Plantin

Associate Professor

Omar Al-Ghazzi

Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi

Associate Professor

Department

LSE’s Department of Media and Communications is a world-leading centre for education and research at the heart of LSE’s academic community. The Department ranked 1st in the UK and 3rd globally in its field in the 2023 QS World University Rankings.

The Department conducts critical and empirical research into the central role of media and communications within contemporary society. One of its primary aims is to conduct research that impacts on the strategies and practices of the media and communications industry, government policymakers and the third sector.

Students will study with internationally-recognised researchers with diverse expertise in media and communications, politics and democracy, regulation and policy, technological change, audiences and literacies, as well as globalisation and culture. Exposed to cutting-edge research, students will engage in a diverse, multidisciplinary approach to theoretical developments and debates in the field.

Apply

Applications are open

We are accepting applications. Apply early to avoid disappointment.