Certificate in Communicating Sustainability - The Revolution Will Not Be Tiktoked: Information for Social Change INFO 3020   The Revolution Will Not Be Tiktoked: Information for Social Change
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Much of the most transformative social and cultural change in modern history has been achieved through sustained collective action—through groups of people coming together around an injustice or common set of problems and fighting to change the status quo or realize shared goals. The formation, structure, communication, tools, and practices of these social movements are inextricably linked to information. This course explores the complex relationships between information, technology, activism, and social movements – with a particular focus on present-day concerns and tools - to understand information as a site of struggle worked within (and upon) by communities to achieve social change. This course will examine how information is accessed, used/misused, shared, manipulated, and mobilized to organize and effect (or resist) social change. Together we will reflect on and respond to several questions: How do people come to participate in civic life through engagement with information and information technology? How do activists and organized social movements use information to perform outreach, build networks, imagine and enact new possibilities – and what does this look like across different groups? What is the link between virality, hashtag movements, and social change? How do activists understand and disrupt algorithms, databases, infrastructures, and policies? How does mediated emotion and digital intimacy sustain activist labour? How can information, digital networks, and emerging information technologies include the most marginalized community members in efforts to build solutions to social, political, and environmental crises?