Course description MA Research Seminar: New Media and Digital Culture

Course: MA Research Seminar: New Media and Digital Culture
Instructors: Richard Rogers
Period: Semester 1, block 2
Course catalogue: MA Research Seminar: New Media and Digital Culture

Aim
The aim of the course is introduce students to the Internet as source and as object of study, and in doing so to train students in online data collection and analysis.

Content
Digital Methods (MC8252): Internet research is often undertaken with standard methods from the social sciences and the humanities, such as surveys, interviews, participant-observation, observation, textual analysis, audience research and content analysis. This course, contrariwise, takes up the conceptual question of medium specificity, and applies it to method. Which methods may be said to have been born digital, as opposed to having been digitized? What may one learn from how online devices (such as search engines and other recommendation devices) analyze information? The course trains students in Internet research, employing digital methods. See http://www.digitalmethods.net.