Digital media and infrastructures shape our everyday lives. We use apps and platforms every day, interact with screens, interfaces and digital agents, navigate through databases and virtual game worlds. The fact that we can access almost any amount of digital content anywhere and at any time seems just as natural to us as the fact that almost every movement we make leaves behind digital traces that can be tracked and algorithmically analyzed.
However, it is precisely the everyday and seemingly self-evident that requires description and analysis. We want to tackle this task in the seminar by taking a critical look at a series of terms that we deal with every day in digital cultures, from «algorithm» to «platform», from «content» to «interface», «tracking» and «virtuality»: What exactly do these terms mean, what is their history, what concepts and theories are attached to them, and where does their analytical potential lie?
The aim of the seminar is to develop a critical glossary of digital cultures that enables a theoretically-reflective discussion and reflection on contemporary phenomena. After all, the terms we use to talk about digital cultures are never technically neutral, but rather always charged with cultural concepts and political ideas that need to be reconstructed.