Digital Culture and Online Life in a Polarized World

Exploring the wild, worldwide web of informal vernacular culture being created, transmitted, and adapted by online communities, this course examines the powers, potentials, and peculiarities (and dangers) of digital life in relationship to community-building, political engagement, social change, and everyday negotiations of individual and group identity. On our hypermodern journey through online architectures, we encounter viral videos, meme warriors, urban legends, occult folk beliefs, disinformation campaigns, #challenges, and trending topics while examining connections between contemporary online culture and ancient storytelling traditions. What new folk groups, storytelling genres, and political potentialities are arising as a result of online engagement? What are the creative, destructive, and ambivalent capacities of online participatory culture and how are they being harnessed in projects of future-making? How are digital traditions being weaponized, online cultures being radicalized, and polarization increased in an era of unprecedented global connection? Course assignments invite students to research, analyze, and participate in online storytelling in an attempt to better understand ourselves and our historical moment through ethnographic engagement.