This course analyzes how power, identity, and politics shape the development and design of digital technologies. We will interrogate the smartification and datafication of our everyday social lives and explore urgent issues of data ethics, including bias and fairness, privacy and surveillance, digital labor, the digital commons, open access, technological redlining and algorithmic bias etc. Students will engage with these concepts through in-class media labs and practical exercises and will also study the materiality of digital infrastructures as the physical manifestation of a digitally-connected world by participating in datawalks. Students will critically examine the nature and scope of the “digital” to analyze and unpack its ethical implications for not only social structures and institutions but also for human and nonhuman nature. The course will provide resources to help students analyze the various ethical negotiations and challenges digital media technologies present in our contemporary everyday lives. Students will also acquire the conceptual language and the practical tools to be able to articulate and meaningfully engage with these socially relevant discussions through their informed opinions. [Tracks C, M]