Social, political, and ethical dimensions of digital transformation
Course introduction
This course investigates how digital transformation relates to current issues relating to democracy and governance in an increasingly connected yet polarised world.
There are widespread concerns that social and political divisions are being exacerbated by information technology, and that this is having a profound impact on the capabilities and quality of both global and local institutions. In a similar way to how the advent of the printing press prompted the rise of democracy and the nation state, perhaps digital transformation is contributing to a similar disruption in governance.
Such trends are particularly relevant in regimes where statehood was not an internal process, and was adopted either through colonial or international activity. Rising populism and authoritarianism provides the social and political backdrop to our analysis of the broad impact of technology, and we will consider whether pluralist approaches may help to combat some of the emerging threats to liberal democracy.
Mandatory pre-course readings
- von Neumann, J., “Can we survive technology” Science and Society
- Ostrom, E., “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems” Nobel Prize Lecture, December 8th 2009
- Mergel, I., Edelmann, N., and Haug, N., 2019, “Defining digital transformation: Results from expert interviews” Government Information Quarterly, Volume 36, Issue 4
- Study on the impact of digital transformation on democracy and good governance, European Committee on Democracy and Governance (CDDG), September 6th 2021
- Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation, Federal Reserve, January 2022
For a 40 point quiz to test your knowledge of the pre-readings see here.
Contents
Group workbooks [download here]
Course introduction [lecture handouts]
- Addiction [lecture handouts]
- What next for Wordle and its fans?, by Jane Wakefield, BBC News, February 2nd 2022
- The Facebook data breach wasn’t a hack. It was a wake-up call, Aja Romano, Vox.com, May 2018
- Democracy [lecture handouts]
- The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked, Carole Cadwalladr, The Observer, May 17th 2017
- A Global Political Realignment? Cato Unbound, Steve Davies, December 10th 2018
- Days of rage, David Zhines, Status 451, January 20th 2017
- Ethics [lecture handouts]
- Beard, S., Deep ethics: the long-term quest to decide right from wrong, 18th June 2019
- Blackman, R., and Ammanath, B., Ethics and AI: 3 Conversations Companies Need to Have, Harvard Business Review, March 2022
- Governance [lecture handouts]
- The myth of panic, Tanner Green, July 15th 2021
- Why a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, Tom Chivers, unherd, September 9th 2020
- Do you believe in sharing? Tim Harford, Financial Times, August 13th 2013
- Dorsch, M.J., Flachsland, C., 2017, “A Polycentric Approach to Global Climate Governance”, Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 17, No. 2.
- Central banks and digital transformation [lecture handouts]
- The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, Vijay Boyapati, March 2nd 2018 (for a nice pdf see here)
- How crypto enables economic freedom, Brian Armstrong, The Coinbase Blog, September 23rd 2021
Optional background preparation
To understand some of the context for my construction of this course I recommend:
- The Coming Storm, BBC Sounds (7 part podcast documentary on the rise of QAnon)
- Four Hours at the Capitol, BBC (a documentary about the storming of the US Capitol building on January 6th 2021)
- Things Fell Apart, BBC Sounds (a documentary that looks at the different origins of the culture wars, which are defined as “the battle for dominance over conflicting values”, or the things we shout about on social media)
- Command and Control, PBS (a documentary looking at how close we came to a major nuclear accident)
I also prepared for this course with the following:
- Death by Conspiracy, BBC Sounds (an 11 part podcast documentary on Gary Matthews, who died from covid in January 2021 having been drawn to social media claims that it was a hoax. I listened to this as a parallel to The Coming Storm but it strayed too far into covid, media ethics, and psychology for me to incorporate it more fully in this course, which attempts to avoid those areas. I didn’t learn much about conspiracy theories aside from episode 9 which provided a good attempt to understand why our common conception is often misplaced. Ultimately I just found this sad.)
Famous documentaries about Facebook include:
Here is the Brexit movie mentioned in class:
Recommended audio
- Can Facebook Survive?, Seriously, August 13th 2019
Recommended activity
- Take the Political Compass test
- Take the Take Machine test
Assessment
- Group report [download here]
- Individual One Pager
- This should be based on an article that you think is relevant for this course and that I should add for next year
- Here are instructions on How to Write a One Pager
- Individual MCQ final exam
- This relates to all lecture content and the readings from the content section
On design
Resources for the public sector
If you wish to work in the public sector I recommend the following resources:
- Machine learning: An introduction for public servants – a free online bootcamp
- Ethics, transparency and accountability framework for automated decision making – a 7 point framework to help UK government departments with the safe, sustainable and ethical use of automated or algorithmic decision-making systems
- Dunleavy, P., Margetts, H., Bastow, S., and Tinkler, J., 2006, New Public Management Is Dead—Long Live Digital-Era Governance Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Volume 16, Issue 3, Pages 467–494
- Clarke, Amanda, Digital Government Units: Origins, Orthodoxy and Critical Considerations for Public Management Theory and Practice