Fall/Winter Timetable

POL2240Y1Y L0101

Undergraduate Course Code: POL481Y1Y L0101

The Geopolitics of Information and Communication Technologies

Themes

New information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, are widely believed to be transforming world politics. While these transformations have brought about important challenges to state power and authority, they have not eliminated power politics and the quest for security and competitive advantage among actors on the world stage. Today, states and non-state actors alike are seeking ways to exploit information and information systems to pursue political objectives. The control of information has long been widely seen as a source of political power, and is manifest today in competition over both the media and the messages of the global communications environment. From the filtering and interception of Internet traffic to the circulation of home-made videos by militant Islamists, a new geopolitics of information and communication technologies is underway.
The Geopolitics of ICTs course is an intensive examination of the ways in which states and non-state actors are contesting the newly evolving terrain of global digital-electronic-telecommunications. Topics covered include Internet censorship and surveillance, information warfare, computer network attacks, hacktivism, and governance of global communications. The course is organized as a series of intensive modules. One feature of the class will be a hands-on” analysis of censorship circumvention and network interrogation techniques at the Citizen Lab (http://www.citizenlab.org/).

The Geopolitics of ICTs course is an intensive examination of the ways in which states and non-state actors are contesting the newly evolving terrain of global digital-electronic-telecommunications. Topics covered include Internet censorship and surveillance, information warfare, computer network attacks, hacktivism, and governance of global communications. The course is organized as a series of intensive modules. One feature of the class will be a hands-on” analysis of censorship circumvention and network interrogation techniques at the Citizen Lab (http://www.citizenlab.org/).