Digital Society
The Digital Society programme is a master programme at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. It is currently offered as a minor programme (30 ECTS) and will also be offered as a Major programme (90 ECTS) starting 2025. It focuses on the social dimensions and consequences of digital technology in today's societies.
Description
Today’s society is strongly influenced by digital transformation. This transformation began with the development of modern computers in the second half of the 20th century, the establishment of the Internet in the 1970s and the emergence of the World Wide Web through the 1990s. There is no area in today’s society that is not affected by digitalisation. Digital technologies have a major impact on various areas of life, on personal interactions as much as on institutions and social processes. These areas of life include education, health, labour, social welfare, trade and consumption, media, law enforcement, agriculture, religion, transport, leisure and family.The master programme *Digital Society* focuses on the social dimensions and consequences of digital technology in contemporary societies. In the social sciences, research on digital society tends to be very interdisciplinary—including sociology, anthropology, economics, communication, system design, contemporary history, computer science and cultural studies. The programme examines how digital technologies have impacted social processes and structures for society as a whole and for individual actors, social groups and practices.
The course programme offers to examine the impacts of digital technologies on social processes and structures as well as on individual actors, social groups and practices under the changing conditions of the digital society. It aims at fostering the theoretical competencies and analytical methods needed to understand these current changes. The curriculum includes the study of the emergence, use and impact of digital technologies in societies from different perspectives in social sciences.