BA Digital Media, Culture and Society

Manchester is a city of firsts: the birthplace of the industrial revolution, the home of the first stored-program computer, and the first city to declare itself a Nuclear Free Zone. Yet, above everything else, Manchester is unrivalled in telling stories about itself, of mythmaking and magic. This unit will offer students the opportunity to apply their newly gained knowledge of digital media, culture and society to the city of Manchester, placing it in a local, regional, national, and global context. The unit offers a place-based, field-based, and project-based unit that will provide students with the opportunity to study Manchester through the lens of digital media, examining the outsized role it variously plays in the cultural, economic, and political imagination. In recent years the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has laid down a ‘digital blueprint’, aiming to be recognized as a ‘world-leading digital city region’ in which a self-styled ‘Atom Valley’ becomes a Silicon Valley-esque hub for technological research and innovation. The course will allow students to critically examine digital developments in the city, from a range of local, national, and transnational perspectives through comparisons to other global ‘tech cities’ past (Tampere, Ahmedabad, Łódź) and present (Shenzhen, Songdo, Bangalore, Lagos).
 

The unit aims to:

• Offer students the opportunity to apply digital media concepts and methods to the city of Manchester
• Provide students with a place-based examination of local, national, and global interconnectedness of digital media
• Offer a project-based study of Manchester across a wide range of applicable digital media topics and subjects covered on the DMCS programme
   

The unit will offer students the opportunity to explore and examine Manchester from a digital perspective. Students will learn about the history of the city, from its role in the transatlantic slave trade and the British industrial revolution, it being the birthplace of the co-operative movement and the computer, and its ‘post-industrial’ rebirth in the 1990s and its integration into global capital networks in the 2010s. Throughout, these topics and eras will be considered from a digital media/technological perspective: why fast-fashion and e-commerce brands have made Manchester home, how short-term housing lets have become a phenomenon in the city, why it has become a base for TV and media production, and how Manchester has become a cyber-security hub in recent years. As a self-styled ‘digital city region’ Manchester will be compared to other global tech cities such as Shenzhen (China), Songdo (South Korea), Bangalore (India), and Lagos (Nigeria), as well as other cities around the world such as Tampere (Finland), Ahmedabad ( India) and Łódź (Poland), each referred to as the ‘Manchester’ of their respective countries due to the city’s industrial innovation in textile production. Alongside lectures and seminars, students will benefit from external speakers speaking on the work they do in/on ‘digital Manchester’, as well as a number of small field trips to sites around the city connected to Manchester’s digital geography and history.  

The unit consists of 1 hour lectures (x 6) delivered synchronously and in-person. These lectures will be delivered in the first six weeks of the course unit, offering background cultural, social, political, and technological knowledge on ‘digital Manchester’. These lectures will be largely instructive, providing students with a broad array of topics and themes that offer a context for subsequent field trips, and can be drawn on for resultant project work.  

The unit also consists of a mix of seminars (2 hours, x 11) and field trips (3 hours, x 5) delivered synchronously and in-person. Seminars will be used to discuss key readings at the beginning of the course unit but will mainly be used to teach the game design/prototype aspect of the unit. In a seminar setting students will have the opportunity to learn about game design, rules, mechanics, and formats through the active playing of various types of games (board, collaborative/competitive, location-based, card, role-playing, online etc.), before space is dedicated to the development of group game prototypes (the oft-used term for time-limited game development is ‘game jams’). Field trips will take place in Manchester and the surrounding area, and are intended to offer an ‘on-the-ground' perspective of the themes covered in the lecture component of the course unit. Trips will be organized by the unit convenor, and involve visits to sites connected to the topic of digital Manchester, with some involving external speakers. 
 

• Recognize the digital and technological dynamics of Manchester at local, national, and global scale [A2]
• Articulate how Manchester’s culture, economy, society, geography, and history has been shaped by specific digital technological forces [A2]
• Compare Manchester’s contemporary digital landscape across different sectors [A2]

• Apply digital media concepts to global city case studies [B2]
• Critically analyse cultural, political, and economic imaginations and visions of a digital Manchester [B2]
• Compare different perspectives on historical technological and digital economic development [B2]
   

• Employ acquired digital skills to study phenomena in a specific urban location and context [C2.1]
• Develop game project/prototype design, writing and communication skills [C2.2]
• Source and critically read relevant digital policy documentation and para-academic material [C2.2]

• Engage with non-academic voices, speakers, and materials on the topic of digital strategy and policy [D2.1]
• Develop ability to offer and integrate constructive feedback into group projects [D2.2]
• Design and demonstrate the critical and educational value of a play-based project [D2.2]
   

Berry, H., Davis, R., Rose, I., Sandor, A., Silver, J. and Yates, L. (2021) Short Term Rentals in Manchester: Time to Act? Available: https://tenantsunion.org.uk/news-stories/airbnb-report.html 
Bogost, I. (2011) How to Do Things With Videogame. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Du, J. (2021) The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
Easterling, K. (2014) Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. London: Verso. 
Flanagan, M. (2009) Critical Play: Radical Game Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Georgious, M. (2012) Media and the City: Cosmopolitanism and Difference. Cambridge: Polity.
Gillespie, T. and Silver, J. (2021) Who Owns the City? The Privatisation of Public Land in Manchester. Available: http://www.gmhousingaction.com/publications/  
Halpern, O. and Mitchell, R. (2023) The Smartness Mandate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 
Lécuyer, C. (2007) Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Manchester City Council (2021) Manchester Digital Strategy, 2021-26. Available: https://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/500002/council_policies_and_strategies/8356/manchester_digital_strategy_2021_%E2%80%93_2026 
Merrill, S., Sumartojo, S., Closs Stephens, A. and Coward, M. (2020) Togetherness after terror: The more or less digital commemorative public atmospheres of the Manchester Arena bombing’s first anniversary. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38 (3), 546-566. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775819901146 
Kidd, A. and Wyke, T. (2016) Manchester: Making the Modern City. Liverpool. Liverpool University Press.
Science and Industry Museum (2023) Manchester, cotton and slavery. Available: https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/manchester-cotton-and-slavery 
Sicart, M. (2017) Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Srinivas, S. (2001) Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India’s High-Tech City. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.  
Turner, F. (2019) Prototype. In Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture (ed. Peters, B.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 256-268.