Digital Media on Trial

Digital Media on Trial explores the traffic between media, technology, and the law. We are familiar with lamentations over the law’s struggle to keep up with rapid technological change. We are also familiar with claims of the law’s ‘timeless’ or even ‘universal’ principles. This course troubles both of these dominant conceptions of the law’s relationship to technology through media. How do courts of law and of public opinion respond to seemingly accelerating cycles of obsolescence? How is technological ‘innovation’ shaped by legal discourses in return? How might a focus on digital media and technology throw these questions into sharper relief?