Undergraduate Course: Introduction to Internet, AI and Society (STIS10020)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Technology plays a crucial and often controversial role in contemporary society, touching almost every aspect of our lives. The course introduces key ideas, people and imaginaries that have shaped the technologies of computing, the Internet and 'artificial intelligence' we have today and may have in the future. You will go behind the screen of your everyday life to learn about topics such as chatbots, memes, Wikipedia, computer mediated communication, digital harms, social video, privacy, cybercrime, the internet in China and India, online relationships, algorithmic bias and justice, platforms and their regulation, misinformation and polarisation, and the business and labour behind AI and your everyday apps. Many dramatic claims, dystopian and utopian, have been made about the transformative effects of the internet and AI. This course will investigate these claims across different areas of life and parts of the world and give you the vocabulary and insights to better understand your own current and future online life, and the challenges and opportunities facing government, business and civil society. In particular you will learn about the way computing and datafication has led us to a society increasingly mediated by information, computational models and networks of algorithmic systems, and how this shapes our individual lives as well as the power dynamics of democracy and markets. The course will give you the insights to analyse 'the Internet and AI' as a socio-technical ecosystem of platforms, practices and discourses that is constantly being remade, not only by the tech billionaires, but also by popular culture, political activists and choices and imagination of millions of users. |
| Course description |
This course has been continually developed over nearly 20 years and has introduced students from many disciplines to the critical study of the Internet, and now 'AI'. Students are given a solid base in scholarship and debates around how internet and AI are integral to a whole range of social phenomena and practices, including topics such as identity, community and networks, social exclusion, harms, inequality and justice, power, work and industry, politics, authoritarianism and democracy, globalisation, and global development and dependence, privacy and surveillance etc. The course will create space for discussion of students' personal experiences and concerns around digital technology, contemporary events reported in the news, histories and futures, as well as theoretical and methodological questions on how to best study and conceptualise the role of technologies in society. We will draw in on the multidisciplinary area of research, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and, where relevant, will complement this with research in sociology, geography, law, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, human-computer-interaction, history, media and communications, and politics. The course content will be framed through a critical realist socio-technical approach to technologies and society primarily using the following framework: Imaginaries of future society shaped by technology including aspirational and dystopian visions that are deployed to shape actions and normalise expectations; Materialities, the infrastructures, devices, standards and physical and informational tools through which socio-technical systems are created, maintained, and circulated and used; and Practices, both everyday uses and habits , and the standardised processes of organisations, markets and governance through which technologies become embedded in social life. These ideas will be used to unpack changes in epistemic power and politics around the internet and AI. Students will also learn the basics of the technology, legal and business issues concepts that are necessary to critically examine contemporary debates.
At the end of the course students will not only be familiar with the social study of the internet and AI, but will also be able to apply key conceptual frameworks and sociological thinking to tackling contemporary issues, policy and practice. This will allow them to follow further courses of study or incorporate these perceives into other areas of study. No specialist technical knowledge is required other than students' personal experience of computers, internet, and mobile phone use. The classes will include elements such as: lectures, tutorials, films, group discussions and debates. Homework will include tasks such as reading and summarising set academic papers and primary documents, watching videos and films, keeping up to date on relevant news reporting, preparing personal exercises for use in group activities, and doing a mini-project for class. Students are also expected to reflect on their own use, discover parts of the internet they might not have encountered, experiment with AI tools, and find and use up to date research and data related to the course topics.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | Students MUST NOT also be taking
The Internet and Society (STIS10001)
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Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Show familiarity with a range of core ideas from social science literature and use them in framing basic accounts of historical and contemporary information and communication technologies in society.
- Distinguish between different theoretical and methodological approaches for studying information and communication systems and practices and their epistemological assumptions.
- Critically engage with key questions about the social shaping and impact of the Internet and AI.
- Apply complex concepts and critical thinking to key issues relating to the broader regulation and governance of societies of deeply mediated by information and communication technologies.
- Find, interpret, evaluate, and use a wide range of different types of data, empirical material and arguments relating to the social dynamics of information and communication technologies.
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Reading List
Baym, N. (2015) Personal Connections in the Digital Age. 2nd edn. Polity, Cambridge, UK
Zuboff, S. (2022) 'Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy? The Death Match of Institutional Orders and the Politics of Knowledge in Our Information Civilization', Organization Theory, 3(3),
Beer, D. (2017) 'The social power of algorithms', Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), pp. 1-13.
Kasirzadeh, A. (2025) Two types of AI existential risk: decisive and accumulative. Philos Stud 182, 1975-2003.
Daniel J. Solove, (2007) "I've Got Nothing to Hide" and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, 44 San Diego L. Rev. 745 (2007). https://digital.sandiego.edu/sdlr/vol44/iss4/5
Chun, J., Witt, C.S. de and Elkins, K. (2024) 'Comparative Global AI Regulation: Policy Perspectives from the EU, China, and the US'. arXiv. Available at: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.21279. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Ability to critically evaluate claims about the risks and opportunities of information technologies, including the internet and AI in the context of personal, business and political life.
Ability to engage with arguments and ideas from outside the social sciences that related to new technology and society, particularly the ability to question technological trajectories and imaginaries.
The confidence to test and explore novel information technologies and evaluate them in relation to human and political values.
The ability to recognise how ideas and arguments from across a range of disciplines can help understand an issue, and bridge disciplinary divides |
| Keywords | digital divide,data justice,AI,information technology,datafication,technology policy,internet,ICTs |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr James Stewart
Tel: (0131 6)50 6392
Email: J.K.Stewart@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Ewen Miller
Tel: (0131 6)50 3925
Email: Ewen.Miller@ed.ac.uk |
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