首页>Courses>Media China: Feeling Digital in Contemporary China

This course will introduce students to the digital transformation of China. The phrase “digital transformation” refers to an array of changes in infrastructures, devices, practices and cultures brough by technologies including but not limited to mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and other computers; websites, online games, virtual worlds, social network sites, apps, and blogs; and governments, corporations, nonprofits, activists, users, makers, hackers, players, and friends.

This course is designed to give you ideas, methods, and experience in understanding how these digital technologies in China change people’s lives, career, and the future of humanity in the broadest sense. You will explore different facets of digital China: e-commerce innovation, online civil society, virtual arts, platform labour, and geopolitics. A choice of readings will provide opportunities to discuss various methods used to “feel” digital, from ethnographic observation and interviews to digital humanities.

WEEKLY TOPICS

Week 1: Introduction: Digital Transformation and the Chinese Experience

Week 2: Understanding the Digital

Week 3: Infrastructure Policy and the Creation of the Chinese Digital Landscape

Week 4: Innovation, E-commerce and Development

Week 5: Forms of the digital divide in China

Week 6: Love, Intimacy, and Family in Digital China

Week 7: Platforms and Labour

Week 8: So Hot Right Now: Digital Culture in China

Week 9: The Digitization of Power

Week 10: Public Sphere and Civic Engagement in Digital China

Week 11: Dreaming of Money in Digital China

Week 12: Chinese Literature, Film, and Art in Digital Time

Week 13: Internship in Chinese Media Industry

Week 14: Technonationalism and globalization

Participation & Mapping Exercise (20%)

Pop-up Quizzes (15%)

Midterm Exam (20%)

Research Project (45%)