What is this?
This minor provides a foundation in the history, theory and practice of digital culture and new media.
"Digital culture" describes the participatory culture of global online communications and creative practice: today's inexpensive recording devices and digital editing tools, social software such as Facebook and Twitter, and other "Web 2.0" applications such as Wordpress, Wikipedia, Flickr, and so on, allows everyone to be a creator, a collaborator, and a publisher.
"New media" describes digital technologies that adapt and transform traditional communications media (e-books or even videogames are new media versions of books and novels; musical and recording instruments become programs and apps on your laptop or iPad; television and radio become multimedia podcasts, YouTube channels, and so on; painting and printmaking are transformed by computer graphics and design, etc.). "New media" also includes Digital Humanities, a field of scholarship and research concerned with the intersection of computing and the humanities.
The transformative influences of digitally-mediated communications are widely recognized in a variety of professions that undergraduates will eventually pursue — whether business, the arts, journalism, education, the government, or academia. This minor provides an interdisciplinary education to prepare students to participate in, use, critically engage with and assess, and perhaps most importantly, contribute creatively to the new global information networks, resources, and communications of the digital age. Students completing this minor will develop a foundation for future employment, higher education, or research in these areas.
