Digital deep dive

Hi, everybody. I'm Dr Nick Cernick. I'm a senior lecturer in Digital Economy, and the Program Director for the MSc in Digital Economies.

I'm Dr Yotta Levizu, a lecturer in Digital Humanities and Cultures, and I'm the Joint Director for the MA in Digital Futures.

I'm Rob. I'm a lecturer in Digital Media Industries in the Department of Culture, Media, and Creative Industries here at King's, and I'm the other, Programme Director for Digital Futures. It's a collaboration between, my department, culture, media, and creative industries, and, Yotter and Nick's department, digital humanities. It's partly about adapting some of the modules that we already offer at King's on topics like AI and Society, Social Media, the Digital Games industries. But it's also been designed around two completely new modules that are drawing on expertise from across these two faculties and some of the cutting edge research on digital culture and media and society that, we are doing and our colleagues are doing.

So the aim is to look at a number of important developments in this field from smart cities to AI, and to help students to think through some of the broader dynamics driving digital culture and to trace some of the historical roots of those dynamics. And we also really wanna equip people to sort of intervene and shape this culture for the better, to to shape digital futures that are more, fair, ethical, and sustainable. So that's really the the core goal of the MA. Yeah. So at its heart, the programme is looking at how digital technologies are transforming, contemporary work, production, exchange, and consumption. So the impact of these sorts of technologies are having across every facet of the economy.

I think one of the unique aspects of the programme is that it's highly interdisciplinary. So it draws upon a variety of different disciplines to take up a whole slew of different perspectives on the digital economy. So not just traditional sort of focuses like management studies and economics, but also fields like sociology, anthropology, political science, and critical legal studies, as well. I think it's also one of the only critical programmes on the digital economy that exists. So it's not just a matter of taking digital transformation for granted, but also really emphasising who are the winners and who are the losers from these changes that are going on. Trying to understand the potential negative impacts of these changes, and trying to also understand how we might transform things in a way which everyone can benefit.

The last sort of key thing of the programme, I would say, is that it really focuses on the systemic. So it's not just looking at individual firms. It's not just looking at individual technologies, but it's trying to give a picture of how everything fits together particularly across the globe. So not just a Western focus, but looking at how all of these, for instance, supply chains interact. Big picture questions around climate change, international inequalities, AI risks, and all of this. That's basically what the programme's about.

So King's has a dedicated team who specialize in, online teaching methods. They've been consulting with all the staff to make sure that, yeah, the this this content is delivered in a way that, makes sense, that's engaging, and that, as Yotu was saying, it is kind of delivered in these kinds of bite sized chunks where you can go in, feel like you've achieved something, and make sure you don't kinda get lost over the course of a a week or a a semester. So it's it's all been been tailor made for online delivery. You get, as Nick said, the same resources and support that would be available to on campus students. And you're also part of this. I mean, our our face to face classroom is very cosmopolitan. You get people from many different backgrounds and places and disciplines. But I think that's even truer of an online course. You're, kind of engaging and collaborating with people from, all over the world, who are bringing their own kind of knowledge and interest and experience there. And you're working for much of the the time at your own pace in your own time. And in some cases, when you're engaging with the kind of materials we are, the interactive resources, the media resources, these are things that's actually easier really to do online than it sometimes is in a traditional classroom, I think.

I think it's very difficult, like you say, to anticipate, how rapidly evolving fields will change. However, what we do is to, teach you the critical digital literacy skills to to kind of, like, understand problems, generate ideas, evaluate potential solutions, engage with notions of ethics and and engage and and involvement with these technologies and these trends depending on which sector you come from, whether it's policy, whether it's media or journalism, whether it's strategy, whether it's research indeed, and respond to the the need that professional organisations have in spotting, these current trends and capitalising knowledge and engagement response, if you like, to how to deal with these trends in the evolving pace, of of of, of of change that is sometimes not it's overhyped, but it's not really, experienced as much on the ground.

However, it raises important, aspects about how to, to to respond in in critical and informed, ways. After you've sort of had an opportunity to think about many different, aspects of this broad area of digital futures. And we've worked quite hard to adapt, the teaching for that, for an online format.

So you'll be introduced to a range of different research methodologies, different techniques you might use to conduct your research, different kind of traditions of, qualitative and quantitative research, different ways of gathering and organizing data. So as well as choosing the kind of question or topic you wanna work on, you'll be walked through different ways of of conducting academic research, and really just formulating your own project, which, I mean, skipping ahead, I know I know some people are interested in how the course might act as a platform for moving on to PhD study. It's doing exactly that sort of stuff.

How are you scoping an area that it's plausible to say something new about within the time you have available? What kind of methods are you gonna use? What kinds of, traditions and disciplines are you working within or maybe hoping to rework. And, yeah, again, we've we've thought quite hard about how best to to adapt that for an online format. This is the opportunity after we cover all these aspects about how to approach a project, what methods to choose, what's the epistemological framework, but also what what hot topics of research and gaps exist around that topic.

Students will have the opportunity to to choose something that they feel passionate about, interested in, Perhaps if they work in the technology field or a policy or a government organization, they can kind of target it to, some, areas where there is an opportunity to develop and have access to, say, key stakeholders or emerging policy documents or strategic insights about a particular, regulatory framework or, creative, perceptions about the creative uses of AI or the toxic uses of AI within a particular field or area, you know, of interest. So there's a wealth of opportunity there to to kind of have agency in developing particular, areas of interest so long they're framed within, the requirements of an academic, research study.

We very much want this to be a a course that kind of responds to and is in some way shaped by what the students bring to it, what they're interested in doing and discussing and the the issues that are moving them. So, from our point of view, it's always great if if you are coming in with a particular interest or goal. Yeah. Hopefully, we we can help you pursue that.