Undergraduate Program Status
Elective | 3rd year | Politics and Society |
Course Level:
Bachelor's
Campus:
Vienna
Course Open to:
Students on-site
Term:
Winter
Host Unit:
Instructor:
TBA
US Credits:
2
ECTS Credits:
4
Course Description:
With the internet and online platforms becoming part of our basic infrastructure, we are faced with new inequalities. The course will discuss inequalities in access to information (about health, rights, economic opportunities), algorithmic discrimination (in consumer markets, labor markets), and induced inequalities in contexts of gender and teams, age and social networks. Possible mitigating policy avenues will also be discussed. Students taking this course will be able to identify digital inequalities, populations at risk, and will be able to propose and evaluate policy options.
Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course students will be able to:
- Relate everyday digital communication to power and inequality;
- Assess how access to digital communication is shaped by pre-existing inequalities;
- Critically analyze claims about the transformative effects of the “information society;”
- Consider the costs, and benefits, of the digital society;
- Understand how digital information is related to property regimes;
- Identify how digital tools are becoming a means of governance, but also a means of resistance and mobilization.