| Unit name | Digital Economy and Society |
|---|---|
| Unit code | SOCIM0031 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Sveta Milyaeva |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies |
| Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
The rise of digital technologies inevitably shapes the economy. This unit will examine a range of aspects of digital economic life and some of the issues they raise for social theory. The digitalisation of the economy and markets prompts the question of the extent to which social processes, groups, institutional structures and culture remain significant in an apparently virtual domain. The unit will demonstrate that social economic relations and market transactions do not lose their social-ness with moving to the digital domain. Rather, the technologies manifest and communicate the social in markets in distinctive ways. The unit will reflect on this through considering the notions of economic action and value, digital labour, presumption, platform capitalism, market devices, the processes of digital market innovation, the automation of finance and the role of algorithms, collaborative and hybrid forms of economic exchanges, ownership and possession of virtual goods.
Aims
On successful completion of the unit, students will be able to demonstrate via the unit assessments:
A capacity to take theoretical ideas outlined in the unit and apply them in student-led explorations, especially empirical explorations of various digital markets
The unit will be taught through blended learning methods, including a mix of synchronous and asynchronous teaching activities
Two pieces of assessment:
Summative assessment 1 (20%) - Group presentations: student-led case studies: empirical material (e.g. examples of markets) that have not yet been 'packaged' by academics to produce a set of theoretical questions about (assesses ILO 4)
Summative assessment 2 (80%) - 3,500 word essay (assesses ILOs 1-3) The summative essay will allow for assessment of students' ability to meet the Intended Learning Outcomes 1-4 by requiring students to develop an in-depth essay argument over a length of 3,500 words that draws upon relevant readings, materials and debates covered in the unit.
Amoore, L. and V. Piotukh. 2015. ‘Life beyond big data: Governing with little analytics’, Economy and Society, 44(3): 341-366.
Coombs, N. 2016. ‘What is an algorithm? Financial regulation in the era of high-frequency trading’, Economy and Society, 45(2): 1-25.
Elder-Vass, D. Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacKenzie, D. 2009. Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacKenzie, D and J.P. Pardo-Guerra. 2014. ‘Insurgent capitalism: Island, bricolage and the re-making of finance’, Economy and Society, 43(2): 153-182.
Milyaeva, S. and Neyland D. 2016. ‘Market Innovation as Framing, Productive Friction and Bricolage: An Exploration of the Personal Data Market’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 9(3): 229-244
Pinch, T. and Swedberg, R. 2008. Living in a Material World: Economic Sociology Meets Science and Technology Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Scholz, T. (ed.) Digital Labour: The Internet as Playground and Factory. London: Routledge
Srnicek, N. 2017. Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press
