This course explores the complex relationship between media, technology, and social change. We will examine how activists from a range of places and historical periods have used new media and technologies to build movements challenging existing laws, norms, institutions, and arrangements. At the same time, we will consider the role that new media and technologies themselves play in changing society, by reshaping how people learn, communicate, work, play, find love, make war, and so on.

Throughout, we will consider recurring themes, tensions and trade-offs that media activists encounter. While it is commonplace to associate media activism with “progress,” we will dwell on its ambivalence and ambiguities. By experimenting with multiple methods of analyzing and making activist media, students will develop their own theories of change. By the end of the semester, you will have gained an overview of the histories of contemporary media technologies and institutions and mastered core concepts and methods in the study of media, technology, and culture.