Com­mu­nic­at­ive Di­lem­mas and Pub­lic Af­fairs

Course content

The course builds on new sociological theories to equip students to analyze how societies are increasingly differentiated in different communication streams that have become more and more dependent on each other. Under the conditions of the pandemic, we have experienced major crises and scandals and seen how local and international actors across many sectors (health, economy, politics, education and security) become interdependent and reliant on new technologies and cannot be treated separately.

This subject equips students with knowledge needed to understand the many different streams of communication at play and how their interdependencies make demands on organization and management.

In the first part of the course, the students will learn to observe and analyze different streams of communication with help of concept like 'form of communication', 'form/media relations' and 'intermediality'. The students will learn new theoretical vocabularies pertaining to the repertoire of form and media of communication, and how they might be producing new possibilities and innovations. The concept provide a nuances language to understand dilemmes and ambuguity in communication. In the second part of the course we look into selected forms such as risk, hybrids, moral and conflicts, and understand their autonomy and build in ambiguities and dilemmas. In the third part of the course we look into selected media such as money, power, affect and law. Again focus wil be on dilemmas and tension. Politics appears here as a question of how to connect and disconnect different forms and media opening up transformative possibilities. In the forth part into new sociological theories concerning technologies af media. We look at technologies such as AI and invesitgated how it function e.g. in law. We look at digital list as media and we ask questions such as 'can algorithms communicate?. The departure is that technologies often do more than they promise.

It will al ends up in a discussion about the conditions of public affairs today. How can we conceptualise public affairs if society has no center, if the adress of public affair becomes blurred and open in a polycontextural world with many observers.