Communication, technologies and digital culture

The course aims to offer to the students the conceptual and methodological tools for a critical knowledge of the past and its complex and changing relationships with the present time. The general goal of the course is to transfer to the student the ability to problematize and contextualize, in a long-term framework, the analysis of the political-institutional, social and cultural processes of the contemporary age, stimulating a constant and close comparison between the historical method and the disciplines that concur to widen its visual angle and to enrich its analytical-conceptual instrumentation: mainly the sciences of the social and cultural processes, political and juridical-institutional sciences, social psychology, political philosophy, anthropology, sciences of language. A more specific objective of the course is to provide students, within the framework of the more general knowledge and the multidisciplinary vision described above, an adequate basic knowledge of the history of information systems and of the cultural industry in the age of the 'public' and 'global networks', with particular attention to the political, social and cultural dimension of the relationship between communication and power. At the end of the learning process the student will have to demonstrate knowledge and ability to understand history as a study of long-term change, in order to develop adequate and discerning skills in the analysis of social, political and cultural contexts, to raise awareness look at the diversity of the points of view on social reality, to develop a complex and problematic approach to the increasingly global and interconnected society of our time. The student will then have to demonstrate his ability to face complex issues in the field of contemporary history, mainly in its international, political-institutional, socio-cultural dimensions, and, more specifically, in the social history of the media and the relationship between power and communication, with the support of advanced textbooks, seminar meetings, multimedia resources. The student must also demonstrate that he is able to apply the acquired knowledge in a competent and reflective way, both to conceive and support arguments, and to solve problems in his field of study. It will therefore have to show itself capable of gathering and systematizing data, as well as selecting, cross-checking and analyzing information sources, organizing them in a congruent manner, establishing links and logical links to support his own reasoning skills and a more mature individual critical sense. The study of contemporary history is consequently indispensable also in order to acquire, in line with the educational objectives of the degree course in Communication, technologies and digital cultures, both general and specific communication and expressive abilities, in the face of the student's more general need to be endowed with that cultural sensitivity essential to dialectical confrontation, to relational activity in public and private organizations and institutions, in problem solving activities.