Platform Politics: Power, Technology and the Circuits of Social Struggle

Module title	Platform Politics: Power, Technology and the Circuits of Social Struggle
Module code	POC3135
Academic year	2023/4
Credits	15
Module staff	(Convenor)

Duration: Term	1	2	3
Duration: Weeks	10

Number students taking module (anticipated)	25

Module description

This module examines the political dimensions of how technology shapes our future. Digital platforms are in the process of constituting new superpowers whose horizontal and global networks are challenging the vertical power of state governments. The tech industry has emerged from the pandemic more powerful than ever, increasing the urgency of issues such as privacy, surveillance, monopoly power and election interference. Topics in this module will include artificial intelligence, machine learning, the future of automation, digital platforms, changes to work and leisure, and the regulation of the tech industry. It will also examine a wide array of historical material relating to technology in order to situate our current tech-driven and media-saturated present within its historical context. This will better enable students to understand the different ideologies that have emerged around technology and its development. This also prompts philosophical reflection on the nature of our relationship with technology and how it is altering what it is to be human. Will technology create a post-human future and will democracy survive long enough for us to assert control over this process?

No prior knowledge skills or experience are required to take this module and it is suitable for specialist and non-specialist students.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to introduce students to a range of social scientific literature on technology and politics. It will also teach students how to write a professional report for a think tank or NGO.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

1. Demonstrate knowledge of the intersection of politics and technology through lectures, class discussion and submitted coursework;
2. Demonstrate knowledge of how technology is affected by issues of race, class, gender and other relations of power

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

3. Assimilate taught materials and utilise them to analyse different forms of written texts;
4. Demonstrate knowledge of major theories of technology and understand them in their historical context;

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

5. Research and write analytical essays;
6. Formulate opinions and be able to summarise material in briefing papers; and
7. Communicate arguments effectively through short reports.

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some of the following topics or readings:

Intro History of the Internet: Tech Utopia/Dystopia
Philosophies of Technology
Smart Cities
Platform Work
Food and Care
Reading Week
Digital Colonialism
Artificial Intelligence
Digital Capitalism
Regulating Big Tech
Democracy and the Public Sphere

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
20	130	0

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled learning and teaching activities	20	10 x 2 hour seminars
Guided independent studies	130	Private study students are expected to read suggested texts and make notes prior to seminar sessions. They are also expected to read widely to complete their coursework assignments. More specifically, students are expected to devote at least: 60 hours to directed reading; 6 hours to completing the formative research outline; 64 hours for completing the assignments.

Formative assessment

Form of assessment	Size of the assessment (eg length / duration)	ILOs assessed	Feedback method
Essay outline	250 words	1,2,4	Written

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Coursework	Written exams	Practical exams
100	0	0

Details of summative assessment

Form of assessment	% of credit	Size of the assessment (eg length / duration)	ILOs assessed	Feedback method
Briefing Paper	30	1,000 words	1-7	Written
Think tank report	70	2,500 words	1-7	Written
	0
	0
	0
	0

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Original form of assessment	Form of re-assessment	ILOs re-assessed	Timescale for re-assessment
Briefing Paper	Briefing Paper (1,000 words)	1-7	August/September re-assessment period
Think tank report	Think tank report (2,500 words)	1-7	August/September re-assessment period

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Bastani, Aaron. 2019. Fully Automated Luxury Communism . London: Verso.

Dean, Jodi. 2009. Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Dyer-Witheford, Nick. 2014. The Global Worker and the Digital Front. In Critique, Social Me dia and the Information Society , edited by Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval, 165-178. New York: Routledge.

Fuchs, Christian, The Utopian Internet, Computing, Communication, and Concrete Utopias: Reading William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and P.M. in the Light of Digital Socialism, pp. 146-186

Fuchs, Christian 2020. Nationalism on the Internet: Critical Theory and Ideology in the Age of Social Media and Fake News. New York: Routledge.

Irani Lily, 2015. Turkopticon: interrupting worker invisibility in Amazon Mechanical Turk. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 611–20. Paris: Assoc. Comput. Mach.

Noble SU. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York Univ. Press.

Rahman H. 2018. Invisible cages: algorithmic evaluations in online labor markets. PhD Diss., Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA.

Englert, Sai, Woodcock, Jamie, Cant, Callum 2020. Digital Workerism: Technology, Platforms, and the Circulation of Workers’ Struggles, pp. 132-145 Tripple C .

Sandoval, Marisol and Christian Fuchs. 2010. Towards a Critical Theory of Alternative Media. Telematics and Informatics 27 (2): 141-150.

Scholz T, Schneider N, eds. 2016. Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet. New York: OR Books.

Srnicek N. 2016. Platform Capitalism . Cambridge, UK/Malden, MA: Polity

Wells K, Attoh K, Cullen D. 2019. The Uber Workplace in D.C. Rep., Kalmanowitz Initiat. Labor Work. Poor, Georgetown Univ., Washington, DC. https://lwp.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Uber-Workplace.pdf

van Doorn, Niels, 2017. Platform labor: on the gendered and racialized exploitation of low-income service work in the “on-demand” economy. Inf. Commun. Soc. 20(6):898–914

Wood AJ, Graham M, Lehdonvirta V, Hjorth I. 2018. Good gig, bad gig: autonomy and algorithmic control in the global gig economy. Work Employ. Soc. 33(1):56–75

Zuboff S. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. New York: Public Affairs.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/

Key words search

Technology, power, platforms, utopia

Credit value	15
Module ECTS	7.5
Module pre-requisites	None
Module co-requisites	None
NQF level (module)	6
Available as distance learning?	No
Origin date	12/03/2021
Last revision date	26/01/2022