STS: Digitalization and social change

This course investigates the relation between digital technology and social change, with a focus on how artificial intelligens (AI) shape both present and future. The course sheds light on how the introduction of AI is shaped by its users, and how the technology both can cause and prevent discrimination.

With a particular interest for users role in technology development, the course sets out to show how big technological shifts manifests in people's everday lives and how technological development is not pre-determined or equals progress. The course presents a critical perspective on the grand visions concerning the potential of AI and promotes more nuanced understandings of how AI affects different groups.

Theoretically the course takes its point of departure in science and technology studies (STS), a field that is interested in how technology and society shape each other, but the course also draws on other resources. It includes perspectives on inclusion and diversity to understand how digital technology can exclude vulnerable groups, promote inequality and contribute to discrimination - or coversly: create possibilities for minorities, strengthen inclusion and resist opression.

The course is open for all students, and is part of the one year program in STS (studies of knowledge, technology and society).

Students of this course have knowledge about:

• critical perspectives on technological development, specifically related to the role of AI in social change
• theoretical tools for doing critical analyses of design and use of digital technology
• social and cultural change in various societal areas as a consequence of digitalization through AI
• digital technology as a source of exclusion and inclusion

Students of this course are skilled at:

• analyzing processes of digitalization on various societal areas
• analyzing design and use of new technology with a focus on the role of users
• analyzing design and use of digital technology in a inclusion and diversity perspective
• planning and conducting a smaller project on digitalization and social change

The course has hybrid teaching with web-based lectures, texts for self-study and small online assignments (primarily multiple choice tasks), in combination with group activities and seminars on campus. It is possible to take the course as an online study.

Due to significant changes in the course from 2025, approved mandatory assignments from previous semesters will no automatically be valid. This has to be approved by the one responsible for the course.

Mandatory tasks:

• Short tasks in online modules
• one written or oral assignment

The exam is in assignment form: It consists of one shorter exam assignment (constituting 20% of the total grade) and one longer exam assignment due towards the end of the semester (constituting 80% of the total grade). To qualify to sit the final exam, the mandatory tasks must be approved.