Data-driven campaigns, inaccurate polling, hacked email systems, social media disinformation, hyper-polarized media coverage, debates over electoral tabulation, the evidence is all around us that the digital technologies of the 21st century have become central features of global political discourse and processes. This course considers how these new technologies have altered our approach to acquiring and critiquing data and information, mediated our modes of social communication, and in turn fundamentally changed the experience of being a citizen. The course starts with foundational readings on theories of citizenship and the development and transition into a digital networked society. From there we continue on to the development of large-scale networked information systems, transitions from old to new media, and a critique of expanded social connectivity through platforms such as social media. Additional topics include methods of communication between government representatives and citizens, the role of digital tools and algorithms in shaping polling methodology, demographic segmentation through digitally-enhanced mapmaking (see gerrymandering), representations of race, gender, and ethnicity in the digital public sphere, and online protest and activism. Readings will include work by Aristotle, Balibar, Castells, Habermas, Hardt and Negri, Galloway, and Tufecki amongst others.

To support readings and in-class discussions, students will perform real-time critical analysis through a close integration of the upcoming 2022 mid-term elections into coursework. Each student will select a significant political race to follow, and report back to the class about how the history, theories, and current events we will be studying relate to the day-to-day progress coming out of their race. In a highly contested election cycle that could see both parties of the American Congress switch hands from Democrats to Republicans, the 24-hour media cycle should be full of stories about newly drawn congressional districts, hyper-charged debates in the culture wars, spiking gas prices and inflation, and concerns about violence both home and abroad. In studying this morass, students will be asked to consider and reflect on how media flows and political trends influence their own sense of citizenship in a digital era from both a critical research perspective and as individuals living through the machinations of the government and media in real time.

Lastly, to connect students more directly to the practices of digital media, the class will include visits from experts in fields such as quantitative and qualitative social media analysis, mapmaking and geographical information systems (GIS), and the aggregation and study of digital communication by governmental representatives. These sessions will help students to both better understand how these technologies and practices are used to influence contemporary politics and to gain tangible skills in utilizing these technologies and practices in their own research and writing.