MSCR 6310: Critical Data Studies

Department: Communication Studies
Concentration: Media & Screen Studies
Institution: Northeastern University
Term: Spring 2026

Catalog Description
Raises critical questions about how society and culture interact with data, acknowledging that data is at the core of our culture and social organization. Emphasizes how data is produced, circulated, and used in different ways, taking an interdisciplinary approach rooted in media studies critiques of technology and power. Case studies discuss what it means to locate the making and using of data within social relations of power, that is, to critically analyze data..

Course Description
Critical Data Studies examines the embededness of data and information into social practices through critical theoretical lenses. Within Critical Data Studies, data and information are not neutral raw materials or objective facts—they are socially, politically, and culturally constructed phenomena. Importantly, studying data and information from a critical studies perspective means understanding that both are fundamentally relational, existing only through networks of connections among technologies, institutions, and people.

This course adopts a network approach to understanding data and information. We begin by defining data and information not as something transmitted or stored, but as the web of relationships through which meanings emerge and society is shaped. In the first half of the course, we will learn methods and approaches for analyzing information networks, such as Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Network Analysis (SNA). Then, we will look at the historical antecedents of digital networks and artificial intelligent systems, from cybernetics to the internet. 

In the second half of the course, we apply these analytical and historical approaches to contemporary sociotechnical systems, examining how media platforms, urban infrastructures, and surveillance networks are shaped by information algorithms—particularly AI systems—that reconfigure social life, distribute power, and produce new realities. By understanding information as inherently networked, students will develop critical tools for analyzing the AI data systems that increasingly govern and shape contemporary society.