MEVIT4310 ¨C Media Innovations

Course content

Innovation is one of the key terms of our current era. We all know the imperative: to innovate, change, disrupt, transform, make new - all in the service of new business opportunities, technologies, efficiency, and progress. In this course we will critically interrogate this concept, asking what innovation is or can be, and examining how innovation is practiced and who is recognizable as an innovator. Why has it become a dominant way of conceptualizing organizational and cultural transformation in the 21st century? Why do we often think of innovation in terms of new, shiny objects or new technologies? What ways of living and making are marginalized in mainstream ideas of innovation?

The main aim of this course is to encourage students to question assumptions about the nature, actors, practices, actors and locations of innovations. It will do so by exploring what the technological, creative and innovative might mean, and who or what gets to be part of those definitions, studying a wide range of examples from the media sector, including TV, journalism, and the cultural industries. The course will draw on perspectives from science and technology studies (STS), organizational studies, sociology, anthropology and design, human-computer interaction (HCI), as well as media and communication studies.

Learning outcome

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Develop their critical acumen with regards to ideas of innovation, as they relate to the media sector in particular.
• Familiarize themselves with a wide range of scholarly perspectives on critical innovation theory.
• Situate a reflection on innovation within broader discussions of identity (e.g. gender, race, class, disability) and practice (e.g. hacking, subversion, repair).
• Conduct independent research (in groups or individually) on a self-selected case of media innovation and present this in class.
• Critically evaluate and analyze media innovation as a multi-dimensional phenomenon

Admission to the course

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

The course is available to students admitted to Media and Communication Studies (master) (being phased out), Politisk kommunikasjon (master) and Screen Cultures (master).

Teaching

In addition to lectures and seminars, this course is built around the student¡¯s own work and participation in and outside class. This may take different forms, depending on the teacher and the respective semester, but may consist of: group work, a practice-oriented research component, student-led case studies of innovative processes and products in the media sector, concept development, media design and other hands-on work (not all in one semester).

In order to qualify for the exam, students will have