Hong Kong

This course introduces the key concepts, issues, challenges and trends essential to understand the cross-border multidirectional flows of information. More specifically, this course provides an overview of the changing paradigm of global communication by studying the interrelation between cultural, economic, political, social, and technical dimensions of media and communication in the contemporary world, as well examining the changing nature of power and the process of power diffusion in the information age. This is a three-part interdisciplinary course, which covers the essential theories and concepts ranging from media and communication studies, political science, international relations, economics and psychology. The first part, Week 2 and 3, introduces key concepts related to the study of global communication, including media economics, world-systems theory, electronic colonialism, soft power, constructivism, and cultural change. The second part, Week 4 to 8, studies major global communication actors – multinational media conglomerates (MMCs), social media platforms, news agencies, advertisers and marketers. It applies the tools from Part 1 to study how each of them as a system (structure and flow) works, as well as some of the contemporary debates in each sector. The third part, Week 9 to 13, looks at major issues of global communication in the digital age, such as misinformation and artificial intelligence, identity politics and polarization, inequality and global conflicts.

Criminal justice refers to the agencies of the government charged with enforcing law, adjudicating crime, and correcting criminal conduct. The major components of the criminal justice system are the police, courts and correctional agencies. Although society maintains other forms of social control such as the family, school, and church, only the criminal justice system has the power to control crime and punish criminals. However, can the police arrest all criminals? Does crime pay? Does punishment deter? This course is specially designed to critically examine whether the criminal justice system is an effective way to deal with crime.m.

Is knowledge of the world possible? And is there even an objective world for our knowledge to be about? These are the topics of skepticism and relativism. Skeptics challenge our ability to know anything about the world. Relativists contest that there is no absolute, objective truth. In this class, we will study both historical and contemporary thinking about these perennial topics. We will address ancient arguments for skepticism, but also look to more contemporary relativistic thinking about science, morality, and other matters.

This course examines selected network protocols relevant to the World Wide Web (e.g., HTTP, DNS, IP); World Wide Web; technologies for programming the Web (e.g, HTML, XML, style sheets, PHP, JavaScript, Node.js.; other topics of current interest (AJAX, HTML5, web services, cloud computing).