Introduction to New Media gives students a hands-on feel for the history of new media technologies and their current social impacts. Much of this year’s course will examine the most disruptive technology of the present—generative AI—but we’ll also learn how knowledge of pre-AI techniques can benefit creators in the post-AI age.
This week defines new media and acquaints students with the course. 
Australia Just Banned Teens From Social Media. Here’s What They Think How TikTok’s Algorithm Figures You Out How Smartphones Are Destroying Childhood
The age-verification breach: when safety systems leak Scholars question one-size-fits-all teen bans
Quiz 2: New media definition & digital hygiene 
YESSlab research preview 
Headlines from the future Preview Task 1 Start Task 1 in class: pick your technology + industry, draft your opening
Task 1: Write about technological disruption (no AI) — due Friday 11 September
Large Language Models, Explained Briefly (3Blue1Brown, 7 min) Why frontier AI still makes things up AI impact risk (video) AI impact risk (website) Quiz 3: AI impact risks Fabricate random connections How to prompt AI: text 1
Evolution demo: ELIZA (1966) → GPT-2 (2019) → a modern model How generative AI works Preview Task 2; set up chatbot accounts When to use AI (slides 1-4, 17-20) How to prompt AI: text 2
Task 2: Chatbot face-off (team) — due Friday 18 Septembe3
This week you learn contemporary AI controversies as well as how to write with a chatbot.
This week reveals how digital tools have made still images and animation easier to create but also less trustworthy.
Text-to-image generators: what they make brilliantly, what they own legally, and what they can’t watch themselves do.
This week introduces visual creativity with a focus on web design.
This week focuses on generating code for websites and games with AI.
This week asks how new media can reinvent storytelling in the form of rich media and games.Students below a B- stay until caught up or class ends.
This week looks at generating stories with AI with an emphasis on avoiding cliches.
[No Wednesday class due to Veterans Day holiday]
This week looks at how digital audio and virtual environments can isolate or reunite us with the world around us.
One Monday, all in class: learn the director’s vocabulary and shoot with it.
The same sentence directs a camera crew or an AI — this week we prove it, then screen the results.
