Course content
Digitalisation creates positive opportunities but also systemic challenges for indviduals, organisations, and the society. The course enables students to develop critical insights into the problematic dimensions of digitalization, addressing their beneficial as well as contentious and adverse effects on the various levels. The course prepares students to be able to critically assess the proposed technical solutions and policy interventions to reshaping the future of digitalisation in business and society. The course helps students identify simplistic, technologically-determinist arguments around digital technologies in order to guide organisations and the society in developing more nuanced, complex and multidimensional strategies, policies, approaches, and practices that address the problematic as well as positive aspects of digitalization.
The course covers the following key topics within the overall theme of impacts of digitalisation on individuals, organisations, and society: (1) Big Data and Datafication; (2) AI and Automation; (3) Privacy; (4) Digital Work; (5) Human Capabilities and Human-centred Digitalisation.
The course is grounded in relevant theories from Internet Studies, Critical AI/Data Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Platform Studies, and Human Development. The course applies these theories to real-world examples from organisational practice and policy.
The course will follow an interactive approach, where students' active participation throughout is required. To evidence active participation and ongoing learning activity throughout the course, students will be expected to reflect on their readings and participate in plenary discussions in class.
The key assignment of the course is a maximum 10 pages long paper covering one or several of the course topics. Students will choose a topic in consultation with the course convenor. As an option, a selection of possible topics will be offered by the course convenor. The paper will make an original contribution to the topic. Given the short nature of the paper, it is unlikely that there will be enough time to engage in extensive primary data collection, therefore, there will be no expectation that students will do so. A feasible written output may instead test/refute an argument or critically analyse an organisational practice or policy with literature-based evidence. It may alternatively include students researching and developing concrete solutions to how the challenging trends and practices of digitalisation could be addressed at various levels (individual, organisational, societal) and within different domains (technology, business, legal/policy). This would involve a critical review of existing literature and solutions, and offering students' own solutions based on their analysis. The paper should be clearly related to the topics of the course and demonstrate achievement of the course objectives by the student.
Students will have an opportunity to get formative feedback on their writen assignment from the course convener and their peers prior to the exam, by presenting their paper in class at 2 points during the course: mid-way through the course and towards the end of the course (timeline to be specified on Canvas prior to the start of the course).
See course description in course catalogue