AANA18116U Digital Identities

Volume 2019/2020
Content

Digital technologies are ubiquitous in our lives today. We socialize, pay our bills, track our fitness, and so on, using the internet and digital devices. Our interactions with digital technologies have produced new forms of identification, as well as new scales of data about ourselves. The growth of ‘big data’ has, in turn, produced new ways of examining our digital selves. This course looks at the nexus of identities, digital data and technologies, and methods, drawing on literature from anthropology, social data science, science and technology studies, and related fields. The course considers how identities have creatively flourished, but also provides a critical interrogation of how gender, race, and other forms of difference and inequality are reproduced in and through digital data and technologies.

This course begins with considering the history of digital data and technologies, and the methods and tools used to understand digital identities from the fields of anthropology and data science. This includes examining differing approaches to ethics in these fields. The course will also explore theories about identity and different ways identities are constructed and performed through digital technologies, such as social media, internet cultures, and fitness trackers. We will also explore the identities of those who design and build these technologies, the politics and norms reproduced through technologies themselves, and the effects they have with particular attention to the role of gender and race. Finally, we will consider the political economic contexts of these technologies and the formation of digital identities.

Learning Outcome

Knowledge

  • Describe methods and practices relating to data science
  • Identify purposes and values of different forms of data
  • Understand and reflect on different theories and cases relating to identities and digital technologies

 

Skills

  • Reflect on the social effects and contexts of digital data and technologies in relation to aspects of identity, such as selfhood, gender, race, and class
  • Apply research strategies from digital anthropology and tools from data science
  • Analyze the ethical implications of methodological practices for research about and using digital technologies

 

Competences

  • Conduct analyses of digital identities using methods and tools from anthropology and data science
  • Critically reflect on these methods, the relationship between digital technologies and identities, and their social effects
  • Reflect on the role of anthropology in relation to digital data and technologies

BSc-, Credit-, international students: 500 pages obligatory literature.

MSc students: 500 pages obligatory literature + 200 pages of literature chosen by students.

  • Category
  • Hours
  • Exam
  • 35
  • Lectures
  • 42
  • Preparation
  • 133
  • Total
  • 210

To be announced.

Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Essay length: 21,600–26,400 keystrokes for an individual submission. 6,750–8,250 keystrokes per extra member for group submissions. The maximum number of students who can write an essay in a group is four.
Aid
All aids allowed
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
Re-exam

1. re-exam:

An essay with a revised problem statement must be submitted at the announced date. The students must sign up for the 1. re-exam.

Please note that the re-exam is an essay even for courses, where the ordinary exam is a portfolio exam.

2. re-exam:

A new essay with a revised problem statement must be submitted at the announced date next semester. The students must sign up for the 2. re-exam.

Criteria for exam assesment

See description of learning outcome. Formalities for Written Works must be fulfilled, read more: MSc Students/ BA students (in Danish)/ exchange and credit students