Digital Policy

Overview

The Digital Policy programme from UCD School of Information and Communication Studies at  University College Dublin  mixes the abstract and the applied with core modules from the School of Information and Communication Studies and optional modules from other Schools in the College of Social Sciences and Law (COSSL) and Computer Science. This programme introduces students to basic concepts and issues in digital policy, giving a historical and critical understanding of how to theorise digital objects and environments by learning to situate them in perspectives such as platform capitalism, governance, data infrastructures, information analytics, interface critique and software studies.

The Professional Certificate in Digital Policy is designed to prepare graduates for careers in evaluating, implementing, and studying core topical, theoretical, and methodological issues that arise in digital policy today. The course will take a multi-disciplionary approach to investigating the institutional and public policy dimensions of the prevalence of digital technology, as well as the underlying social conditions (economic, political, and cultural) and public/private sector contexts that give rise to such technologies and their governance. Content will include lectures and hands-on exercises by academics, representatives from digital industries, and representatives of of civil society.

Programme Outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

• Understand both theoretical and applied issues in digital policy
• Demonstrate advanced conceptual knowledge of digital technologies and their implications for socio-political life
• Understand the dilemmas and tensions involved in regulating digital technologies

Applying knowledge and understanding

• Critically appraise evidence from research papers concerning topics in digital policy
• Critically evaluate existing digital policies and policy proposals and their limitations

Making judgements

• Systematically analyse the research literature in a key area of digital policy as part of their dissertation
• Decide, under guidance, on appropriate methodology and materials to be analysed for their dissertation