This course deals with significant and contemporary theoretical developments that have recast many of our received conceptions of communication and the media in a new light by both highlighting their inadequacies and shortcomings, and opening the way to a theoretically more sophisticated and practically more relevant understanding. Poststructuralist, postmodern and postcolonial theories together with gender, ethnic and queer perspectives, as well as contemporary theorizations of ethics are discussed concerning self-other, gender, sexual, inter-national, global relations and communications. The convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology in the make-up of the Internet and the World Wide Web and the promised potential for democracy of the Internet are also discussed.
