New Media and Trends in ICT

**This is a sample course decription only. Actual course content may change term-to-term.

Course Description

The goal of this course is to acquaint students with the new media and technologies and their challenges, opportunities, threats and both technological & social possibilities. The course consists not just of the theory, there is also a team assignment.

The main goal of the course is to help change the perception of the media and ICT technologies as an unbiased and neutral source of information and help a student to understand the complexity and variability of the information society. The area of new media is quite broad and interdisciplinary - it covers informatics, laws, politics, economics, ethics, history and sociology. We shall focus on the universal aspects and influences (such as digitalization, globalization, e-government, ownership/power concentration, economic/political/social pressures, fake news). Their better understanding helps to orientate better in contemporary information society.

The course is opened not just for ICT students, but for all students interested in new technologies (e.g. management, finance, and economics students are welcomed). Just a basic understanding of ICT is expected. The course is both for graduate/undergraduate students. The course includes an original student semestral teamwork.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to orientate in the turbulent environment of new media and modern ICT trends and have a good grasp of the many-2-many concept of communication (as opposed to traditional broadcasting one-2-many).

Course Content

New media are rapidly changing contemporary society about the same way Johanes Gutenberg's invention of printing changed medieval society - when revolutionized access to the information by industrial means.

Turbulent development of modern media together with their close relation to the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) makes New media studies absolutely essential for the students who want to stay in touch with the latest development. New Media is a field of study where a computer plays a central role as the medium of production, storage, and distribution of information.

The course focuses not only on the technological level of the new media, but also reflects on the social and ideological impact of the personal computer, computer networks and digital mobile devices on modern society as a whole and individual potential in particular.

List of Topics

1) History of communication and media
2) A modern form of communication and new media
3) Social media and its specifics, social bubbles
4) Information society
5) Information oversaturation, fake news
6) Digitalization
7) e-government
8) e-voting, digital signature
9) Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, ethics
10) Copyright
11) Privacy
12) ICT security
13) Modern trends in ICT - from Bitcoin and BlockChain to 3D print