Digital Advocacy

Catalog description

This course focuses on the ways that digital technologies and social media increasingly shape the contemporary impact of social movements and political activism. Bringing together cultural studies approaches to communication and social movement theories with historical attention to protest and social change, this course considers what it means to 'become-activist' and how to serve as an advocate for social-political change as an ongoing aspect of one's everyday life. Hence, the course will explore matters such as commitment and participation, place and identity, conflict and group cohesion, and the social justice issues that arise in regard to race, class, gender, ethnicity, disability rights, immigration and refugees, environmentalism, animal rights, and global activism. As part of the MS program in Emergency Management, the course will also consider the impact of digital advocacy in crisis, emergency, risk and disaster contexts.