This course examines how digital infrastructures, online cultures and social practices intersect to shape public narratives about credible knowledge in contemporary societies. It focuses on how today's information environments are simultaneously structuring, and structured by, technology, social actors, and epistemic norms. As a reading seminar, the course is built around three recent scholarly books that will be read and interrogated in detail. Over four in-person sessions with compulsory attendance and asynchronous work in between, we will follow the citations, explore the case studies, and connect insights to adjacent scholarship. Students are expected to do significant work at their own pace in between sessions.

Donovan, Joan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg. 2022. Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America. New York: Bloomsbury publishing.

Phillips, Whitney, and Ryan M. Milner. 2021. You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Tripodi, Francesca Bolla. 2022. The Propagandists’ Playbook: How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.