Communication

This course focuses on the intersection of technology, media, communication, and society. In light of its rapid growth and broad adoption, the internet has become both the medium and the target of military, political, social, and cultural conflicts. This course focuses on the technological, institutional, and political aspects of online conflict. Students will study this space by analyzing three interrelated dualities of internet design, regulation, and use. This class takes a broad look at cybersecurity as a core issue in an information society. Students develop analytical thinking about the role of technology design, regulation, and use in contemporary conflict.

This course deals with a range of aspects of Internet research including theoretical, practical, and ethical aspects. The course utilizes three approaches to explore the topic. The first approach looks at how the Internet can be used as a research tool. How can data collected through the Internet help us understand the world around us? This includes the use of search engines, online databases, and other digitally-generated resources, such as the discussion pages for Wikipedia articles, hyperlinks, and Facebook profiles. The second approach looks at research of internet phenomena, such as social network sites, search engines, and more. The third approach uses internet-based tools or data to study online phenomena. The course examines how the Internet can be used as a research tool, and how to research the Internet. Throughout the course, special emphasis is placed on different aspects that set the Internet apart from other media environments: multimedia interactive contents, recorded behavior, technological and social structures, as well as its capacity to act as a social environment in its own right. While the main class focuses on discussing the conceptual and theoretical implications of Internet research, the tutorial includes a practical orientation, where students practice using new tools.

This course discusses communication in a professional setting. Topics include: communication in business; active listening; empathy; assertive behavior; non-verbal communication; the importance of feedback; constructive criticism; constructive debate; difficult conversations; intercultural communication; written communication.

This course debates contemporary issues in a Socratic manner inspired by Michel Sandel's lectures and Ian Shapiro's views on Enlightenment philosophy, which placed great faith in the power of human reason to understand the true nature of our circumstances and the idea of progress in human affairs as means to control, and perhaps even improve, our environments and our lives. Through different roles, students adopt different positions to think about sensitive issues related to conflictual situations from points of view that are not necessarily based on their personal convictions. Topics are inspired from the Council of Foreign Affairs: What is a Moral Foreign Policy.