The digital culture class during my third semester at Sciences Po Paris expanded my humanities-centered cursus to a broader understanding of the digital world. At the same time I have always felt a deep interest in the European Union and its policies. This stems from the fact that I have grown up in Brussels. What always hurt me when talking to other young Europeans about the EU is the lack of knowledge about this central political institution. Upon realising that I could conduct a survey that measures exactly this missing understanding, I was hooked. I knew that the EU was about to implement the new DSA/DMA package and wanted to see with my team how much young Europeans knew about the already existing legislation.
A second year student at Sciences Po Paris university majoring in Politics and Government and specializing in the MENA region. Because of the dense legal teachings that are tied to my choice of subjects, I found this lecture course particularly enriching as it furthered my understanding of digital rights and the legal questions that arise as we get deeper into the digital age; such as the one my group chose to analyze. Whether you are particularly interested in technological topics or not, these are the new bricks giving shape to our society, and if we want to avoid corporate interest and big elites to be the ones determining how this future social paradigm looks like; it is imperative that all of us have a basic notion of what is going on. We hope that our research helps shed light on the circumstances in which we as young people in the EU live, the first step into knowing how to proceed.
As a second year student at Sciences Po majoring in Political Humanities, I enjoyed learning new things about the digital world and especially coding. It was something that I had never done before and getting to know the basics of how we can create a website was interesting. Moreover, I am looking forward to the analysis of our research on rights as data subjects in the European Union to see if our hypothesis was right and what we can then conclude from it. I believe that we should be a bit more curious about digital culture as it has been central in our lives since the beginning of the XXth century and it keeps evolving as time goes by.
Currently a second year University student. As a political science major, it has been very challenging yet interesting for me to study introductory notions of computer science, or more precisely the “Digital Culture” course. That being said, I think in this day and age it is vital for one to be tech savvy and aware of navigating computer processes and all that comes with digital safety and trends. Nonetheless, my team and I embarked on choosing data regulation in the EU as a research topic, to not only educate ourselves on how our digital rights are legally protected within EU jurisprudence. But also to gather far reaching data on our chosen topic, to then perhaps introduce influential findings that would intersect both digital and political realms.
I really enjoyed the digital culture class as I got to see behind the proverbial current for the first time and truly understand the mechanisms of the technology I use every day. As a second year political science student and a member of the generation who has the most social media and internet usage I chose to do this project because I felt it was about time I learn about my legal rights as a digital citizen. It was fascinating to be able to combine our knowledge on law, in terms of rights, and sociology, through our surveys. I think digital footprints and data rights is a topic that every internet used needs to be educated on. Hopefully our project will lend some insight into European youth and their data habits.