TFL603 Digitalization and Cultural Identities: Analog Pasts, Digital Futures and Technosocial Challenges (Autumn 2026)

Upon successful completion of the course, the participants will be able to:

• Implement the relevant theoretical perspectives into their own projects.
• Understand the relevant concepts (e.g., digitalized historical consciousness, technosocial historical futures, analog pasts vs digital futures, etc.) and apply them in their own work.
• Discuss the relationship between key theoretical approaches and the relevant empirical evidence.
• Analyse how the cultural identities of minorities are influenced (and sometimes transformed) by the evolution of digital technologies.
• Discuss how digitalization alters historical evolution and how this alteration influences the formation and/or maintenance of historical and cultural identities.
• Be aware of how digitalization alters the perception of identities and self-identities.
• Evaluate the appropriateness and usability of the theoretical approaches and empirical evidence discussed in the course in relation to their own research interests.
• Apply the relevant insights in their operation as members of national and local societies and as citizens.

Over the recent decades, the rapid process of digitalization transformed the ways in which we communicate, but also the ways in which we perceive ourselves and others. An important part of this perception is related to how we relate to pasts and futures (both our own pasts and futures and those of others) to develop and/or maintain our cultural identities, which in their core are historical, i.e. history made.

The course, designed for PhD students and post-docs, discusses the interplay of digital technologies, technosocial imaginaries, and collective identities, and the ensuing shaping of cultural identities as part of historical processes. It is structured on two core elements, one theoretical and the other empirical. The theoretical elements consist of an introduction to approaches on (a) the relation between technological evolution (with emphasis on digitalization) and cultural identity; (b) the historical core of cultural identities, especially of the minority identities, which are unavoidably related to historical narratives; (c) the historical evolution from analog to digital societies and how this evolution altered identities and self-identities; (d) the ways in which the anticipation of digital technosocial futures alters historical and social consciousness, identification and self-identification. The empirical part of the course focuses on three specific cases, in which the interplay of digitalization, imagined futures, and cultural identities are manifested, namely the cases of Sami people in the Nordic countries, the social inclusion of resettled refugees in New Zealand, and the online delivery of public services in Norway. Although these three cases report experiences from different contexts, they all have a common conceptual thread: the interplay of the social and the technical and the shaping of cultural identities

Responsible for the course: Professor Antonio Diaz.
The course is developed in collaboration with the Norwegian Research School on Digitalization, Culture and Society (DIGIT) and is part of the research school’s course portfolio. Priority access to the course is given to members of DIGIT.