Professors

Marcel Burger (Université de Lausanne)

Schedule

Tuesday
From 16:50
to 18:20
Thursday
From 16:50
to 18:20

Course description
Globalized societies have gone digital. Currently, more than 95% of their citizens are ‘connected’ via mobile devices to an expanding variety of digital platforms. Digital communication is reshaping our relations with the environment: from institutional (media, politics, security, health, education), to professional (transportation, advertising, banking, retail etc.) and ordinary day-to-day practices (from phone calls to posting on social media), users position themselves in new environmental contexts.
From the perspective of a critical approach to communication, digital technology creates ‘problematic’ new forms of public communication: on the one hand, ordinary users challenge the power of established gatekeepers (politicians, journalists, all kinds of legitimated experts) and fuel the public debate on environment. On the other hand, a ‘top ten’ big Tech Companies rule the digital business and in effect impose a new powerful deregulation on market control, affecting our sense of relation to the environment.
This course examines how users of digital devices reshape their relation to the environment through communication: what are time and space in digital environments? What kind of specific identities are displayed? In what kind of messages? What is the difference between acting as individuals and members of communities in digital environments? More globally, what is the relation between online and offline? What are the environmental stakes?
Digital communication establishes new necessary skills (i.e. ‘digital literacy’), new forms of public debate and a new sense of citizenship. It also imposes a global surveillance and influence through digital traffic and the auto-isolation of users into filter bubbles. Globally, digital communication fundamentally affects our relation to the environment: How are digital practices preformatted by the affordances of specific platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Weibo etc.)? How do users network online to form communities? What for? What is at stake in digital ‘presence’? Why is digital communication a global & globalized public space? What is implied by sharing on social media? What is privacy in a digital space?
Accordingly, the course will cover the following topics:
- Digital literacy and ethnography.
- Social media as public communication.
- Reshaping of participation framework & public debate in digital spaces.
- Surveillance, E-activism, slacktivism, clicktivism.
- Sharing practices in digital communities

Learning outcomes
In this course the students will acquire and improve knowledge and awareness of their relations with the environment and the social change implied by their use of digital communication. (especially interactive platforms of the web 2.0.). They will be able to identify strategies of gathering public and private information and be critical of them. They will be able to reflect on complex multimodal messages. In particular, the students will:
- Learn to read and discuss texts on social media and digital communication.
- Learn to consider complex dynamic-static multimodal data.
- Learn to read and evaluate hybrid public-private messages.
- Learn to diagnose fake, real-true, alternative communicative strategies

Teaching approach
The method of instruction will be interactive and practical. Sessions will be structured around central concepts in digital communication linked with the real-life experience of students as multi competent users of digital platforms themselves. We will apply the techniques of interdisciplinary analysis to consider in detail how institutions (state governments) and individual social media users address and shape their communication in the context of globalized crisis: covid-19 pandemic, climate change, refugee crisis, rise of populism, big data gathering etc.
The data will be taken from a variety of contexts (Europe, the UK, the US, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand). The students will also collect multimodal data on social media platforms where they are themselves active, and provide an analysis of messages focused on relations with the environment through forms of (self-declared or externally legitimated) expertise.

Evaluation method
The students’ grade will be composed by:
- Class participation (20%): presence and engagement in group discussions.
- Class exercises (30%) on the basis of 3 or 4 assessments.
- Data session (50 %): a presentation and led discussion based on a personally chosen case study, with data collection as well as transcripts.
A mid-term grade will be communicated to the SHSS office based on class participation and exercises.

Bibliography
ADAMI E. & C. JEWITT, (2016), Special issue. Social media and visual communication, Visual Communication 15 (3): 1-8.
ANDROUTSOPOULOS J., (2015), Networked multilingualism: Some language practices on Facebook and their implications. International Journal of Bilingualism 19/2 : 185-205.
ANDROUTSOPOULOS J., (2014), Moments of sharing: Entextualization and linguistic repertoires in social networking. Journal of Pragmatics 73: 4-18.
BENKLER YOCHAI, ROBERT FARIS & HAL ROBERTS, (2018), Network Propaganda. Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. Oxford. University Press.
BURGER M., J. THORNBORROW & R. FITZGERALD, (2017), Discourses of Social Media. Public, Political and Media Issues. Bruxelles: DeBoeck.
CUMMISKEY K. & HJORTH L., (2017), Haunting Hands. Mobile Media Practices and Loss. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
CUMMISKEY K. & HJORTH L., (2014), Mobile Media Practices. Presence and Politics. The Challenge of Being Seamlessly Mobile. London. Routledge.
GEORGAKOPOULOU A. & T. SPILIOTI, (2016), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication. London-New York: Routledge.
GIAXOGLOU KORINA, (2021), A Narrative Approach to Social Media Mourning. London-New York. Routledge.
GROTHAUS M., (2021), Trust no one. Inside the World of Deepfakes. London. Hodder & Stoughton.
HERRING S. C., (2016), New frontiers in interactive multimodal communication. In Georgakopoulou G. & T. Spilioti, The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication (pp. 398-402). London-New York: Routledge.
JAWORKSI A. & C. THURLOW, (2017), Mediatizing the “Super-rich,” Normalizing Privilege. Social Semiotics Volume 27, Issue 3: 276-287.
JEWITT C., (2017), The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. London. Routledge.
JOHN N., (2013), Sharing, collaborative consumption and web 2.0. Media@LSE electronic working papers 26.
JONES R., (2016a), Digital literacies. In E. Hinkle (ed.) Handbook of research into second language teaching and learning, Vol III (pp. 286-298). London: Routledge.
JONES R., (2016b), Surveillance. In Georgakopoulou G. & T. Spilioti (2016). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication (pp. 408-411). London-New York: Routledge.
JONES R., A. CHIK & CH. HAFNER, (2015), Discourse and Digital Practices. London: Routledge.
JU BEI, TODD SANDEL & RICHARD FITZGERALD, (2019), Understanding chinese internet and social media: the innovative and creative affordances of technology, language and culture. Cahiers de l’Institut de linguistique et des sciences du langage 59: 161-178.
LEE C. (2015). Digital discourse@public space: flows of language online and offline (pp. 175-192). In Jones R., A. Chik & Ch. Hafner (Eds.). Discourse and Digital Practices. London: Routledge.
Miller Daniel (2016). Social Media in an English Village. Or how to keep people at just the right distance. London, UCL Press.
NOBLE S. & B. TYNES B., (2016), The Intersectional Internet. Race, Sex, Class, and Culture Online. New-York. Peter Lang.
PAPACHARISSI Z., (2015), Affective publics. Sentiment, technology and politics. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
PAGE R., D. BARTON, J. W. UNGER & M. ZAPPAVIGNA (2014), Language and Social Media. A Student Guide. London, Routledge.
TANNEN D. & A.-M. TRESTER, (2013), Discourse 2.0. Language and New Media. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
THURLOW C., (2013), Fakebook: Synthetic media, pseudo-sociality, and the rhetorics of Web 2.0. In Tannen D. & A.-M. Trester. Discourse 2.0. Language and the new media (pp. 225-250). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
THURLOW C. & K. MROCZEK, (2011), Digital Discourse. Language in the New Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
VAN DIJK JOSÉ, (2013), The Culture of Connectivity. A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Venice
International
University

Isola di San Servolo
30133 Venice,
Italy

-
phone: +39 041 2719511
fax:+39 041 2719510
email: viu@univiu.org

VAT: 02928970272