Critical Social Inquiry 0199 - Hashtags, Memes, and Trolls: Politics in the Age of Social Media

Although early internet theorists imagined the World Wide Web as a wild frontier where only minds mattered, social media testifies to the lasting force of bodily inscriptions like race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and class. In this course, we will consider how identity shapes how we communicate, debate, collaborate, and mobilize online. We will investigate how different populations engage with digital technologies and social media in particular; how such environments expedite stereotypes and construct difference; and how online platforms like YouTube, Twitter/X, Instagram, and Facebook are tools of social justice as well as replicators of reactionary ideologies. Our critical arsenal will draw upon Media Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Cultural Studies, and Ethnic Studies. We will apply these theories to current events online. Throughout our examination of the politics of hashtags, memes, and trolls, we will foreground the ways that power relations continue to inform how bodies travel through the digital realm Keywords:Digital media, social media, social justice, Internet studies, sociology

In/Justice The content of this course deals with issues of race and power Students should expect to spend 10 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time