Digital media, power and social change - SOC00074I

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Module summary

How can we understand the many ways that digital media and technologies are changing our everyday lives? To understand how digital media are impacting our lives, communications and social relations it is necessary to understand the big social transformations and changes we see today. By looking at the relations between digital media, power and social change, this module will provide you with the means to make sense of how and why digital change happens. The module will ask how power is exercised to make, shape or resist digital social change. You will integrate digital developments in the relations between past, present and future, providing you with a fresh perspective on digital life and enabling you to see it in contextual terms both now and as these changes continue into the future.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 2 2025-26

Module aims

The core aim of this module is to examine the relations between digital media, power and social change. It aims to provide you with the knowledge, skills and resources to understand, interrogate and analyse the ongoing changes brought about by digital media. Drawing on theories of power and change it will ask how digital media fit into or shape wider social transformations. The module will introduce you to a range of theories and will demonstrate how these theories and analytical insights can be applied to the specifics of digital media, culture and communication. It will show you how power, structures and agency are involved in digital change and what this means for places, people, connections and interactions. The module aims to reflect on the relations between past, present and future and will examine how digital developments drive or are driven by understandings of these relations. The module will provide case studies and examples of how specific digital developments can be analysed through notions and theories of power and change. Working across scales, you will be provided with a range of sources that will enable you to situate digital media transformations within larger, ongoing and emerging social and cultural shifts. The module aims to further develop your ability to situate the digital in a context of cultural shifts and movements. On the module you will think about why digital change happens and how it comes about. It will provide the means for you to gain a greater understanding of the ongoing changes that digital applications and innovations bring to our lives. You will be able to situate these digital media transformations and use theories to make sense of them as they happen now and into the future.

Module learning outcomes

Critically evaluate theories of social change and their utility for understanding digital media, cultures and societies

Demonstrate an ability to apply theories of change to specific digital developments

Demonstrate an ability to work with theories and approaches used to analyse ongoing transformations

Identify and critically interrogate the relations between digital media transformations, power and social change.

Demonstrate an ability to situate digital developments within the relations between past, present and future

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

The formative assessment will enable students to explore and describe a particular theory of either power or social change. This will help to develop the foundational knowledge for the summative assessment. As such, the summative will provide a practice of the key knowledge and skills of the summative assessment.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Module feedback

Formative assessment will take place in a dedicated week. A classroom based task around a collaborative piece of work will be used for students to explore a specific theoretical idea of power or change, and provide peer feedback with input from the lecturing staff.

The summative work will be marked according to defined criteria and will assess MLO 1-5. Students will receive written feedback showing areas for development.

Indicative reading

Indicative reading might include

Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. New York: Profile Books.

Srinivasan, J. (2022) The Political Live of Information. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Schwarz, O. (2022) Sociological Theory for Digital Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.