Course Code and Course Title
Media China
Time and Venue
Tue 10:30-13:15
ELB202
Instructor
Dr. Alberto GEROSA
Course Description
This course will introduce students to significant selected themes on Chinese Media and the Country’s Digital Transformation. The phrase “digital transformation” refers to an array of changes in infrastructures, devices, practices and cultures brought by technologies including but not limited to mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and other computers; websites, online games, virtual worlds, social network sites, apps, and blogs; and governments, corporations, nonprofits, activists, users, makers, hackers, players, and friends.
This course is designed to give you ideas, methods, and experience in understanding how these digital technologies in China mediate people’s lives, career, the future of humanity in the broadest sense. You will explore different facets of digital China: online civil society, virtual arts, platform labour, and geopolitics. A choice of readings and films will provide opportunities to discuss various methods used to “feel” digital, from ethnographic observation and interviews to digital humanities. Students can choose to complete their final research project as a written assignment or as a video essay.
Course Outline
Week 1 Introduction: Digital Transformation and the Chinese Experience
Week 2 Understanding the Digital
Week 3 Infrastructure Policy and the Creation of the Chinese Digital Landscape
- Project Coach Session
Week 4 E-commerce, Innovation, and Development
- Project Presentations
Week 5 Love, Intimacy, and Family in Digital China
- Project Presentations
Week 6 Platforms and Labour
- Project Presentations
Week 7 So Hot Right Now: Digital Culture in China
- Midterm Exam for Ug students/Ethnographic Interview Assignment Submission for MA students
- Project Presentations
Week 8 The Digitalization of Power
- Project Presentations
Week 9 Public Sphere and Civic Engagement in Digital China
- Project Presentations
Week 10 Dreaming of Money in Digital China
- Project Presentations
Week 11 Literature, Film, and Art in Digital China
- Project Presentations
Week 12 Technonationalism and Globalization
- Project Presentations