Course overview
This course will explore the implications of the new intensive data gathering arising from the ubiquitous media technologies that surround us. It will cover theories of surveillance and then look at the practices of data gathering and consider the impact on areas such as freedom of expression, privacy, and identity. The course will consider the domestic and international legal frameworks around big data use, including from a national security perspective. The prevalence of predictive algorithms and the uses to which they are being put will be interrogated, and the possibilities for future policy directions explored, with an emphasis on the areas of transparency and accountability.
Course learning outcomes
- Understand the role of digital media in shaping new practices around surveillance and privacy
- Understand theories about how surveillance works in society
- Understand the role of law in creating mechanisms of transparency and accountability
- Understand the role of policy in creating mechanisms of transparency and accountability
- Understand different regulation schemes in place across the globe
- Understand the ways everyday practices are translated into data used by commercial and government organisations
- Understand how the performance of identity is shaped through practices of surveillance
- Understand how the practices of everyday media use are articulated with larger policy and law regimes
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