Navigating New Media

Navigating New Media

L59 CWP 2050

"New media" is commonly defined as any media delivered digitally rather than in print form, and includes everything from a New Yorker article shared on Twitter to a Youtube influencer's latest vlog to an annual Spotify Wrapped list posted to Instagram. We engage new media everyday, but how does it shape the way we receive, share, and interpret information? How might it undergird our very sense of self? This course would focus on analyzing and interpreting new forms of media-specifically social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, but also blogs, podcasts, and streaming platforms, all of which toward no small amount of recent scholarship has been dedicated. Taking these platforms seriously as forms of communication (and miscommunication) is crucial to being media literate today, and to understanding the power asymmetries inherent to almost any new media experience. Reading essays by scholars such as Safiya Umoja Noble, Slavoj Zizek, and Ian Bogost, along with writings by culture critics like Malcolm Gladwell, Barrett Swanson, Safy-Hallan Farah, and Jia Tolentino, we will explore new media through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses, considering a cross-generational span of perspectives.