Course info
  • Emma is experimental in nature and uses an integrated advanced automatic translation service
  • English

Course Overview

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Persona, society and technology: processes of transformation in a digital age.

We are becoming digital in a way that is not clearly understandable yet. We are no longer capable of distinguishing between what is real and what is virtual, as we did at the beginning of the digital story. Our lives, bodies, emotions, feelings and memories are strongly embedded in the digital world. For better or worse, we are living in a technological era which is re-defining how we think, learn, love, work. What does it mean to be a digital persona? What is the role of algorithms, the digital unconscious and knowledge networks.

This collective MOOC involves distinguished experts in the field of digital culture in open discussion. They present their own reflections on these questions, and their contributions take us through the changing landscape of self, society and technology, transforming hopes and criticism into food for thought.

Whatever your reason for joining this MOOC, you can explore the questions with our experts to clarify your own responses.


You can exploit the course in 2 ways

1. Serendipity

Play a game of Fortune. Choose any expert as your starting point and then randomly construct your own learning journey through digital culture. You will discover your own logic and connections between the different contributions. Using the coursebook, you can record and comment your journey, and share it with other users. 

Click on the video tutorial to find out more about the Coursebook feature.

2. Guided tour

You can see these MOOC lessons as conceptual sets that navigate you through the changing technological and societal landscape. Each set offers you different perspectives and challenges to reflect on and enjoy:

(i) Situating individual minds within the landscape (Bogliolo, Sorrentino, de Waard, Webster)

(ii) Mapping emerging territories and directing the individual within the new socio-technical regimes (Orban, Weinberger, Downes, Miranda)

(iii) Describing/redescribing paradigms and realities (Boyd, Kerkhove, Powe, van Heusden).


In the lesson of Digital Dis-courses MOOC, Bruno Sorrentino looks at the human element in documentary making and reflects on the implications of new technology and social media for journalism and film-making. 

Course Structure

  • Lesson 1 - Documentary making in the digital age

Teacher

Bruno Sorrentino

Bruno Sorrentino is a multi award winning UK-based documentary filmmaker. He began his career at the BBC in the 1970s as a film editor, moving on to cameras and then directing. He's moved through various roles both as a producer and executive producer,  specialising in projects covering human environment and development issues. His twenty -year series 'Growing Up' charting the fortunes of children born at the same time in different parts of the world won the prestigious One World Television award. He is currently developing an update to the series.