COM 304 The Industrialization of Creativity from Mass Media to Platform Economy
The recent enthusiasm around the term creativity and its offshoots, such as creative class and creative labor, highlights how creativity is being industrialized, making it an integral part of the market-oriented framework. Creativity is consequently often connected with broader aspirations of socio-economic growth. This course surveys key issues of the media market from cultural/communication industries to platform economy as it relates to creativity in the current media landscape. Students will learn how the prevalence of social media, mobile devices, search and aggregators markets, and active prosumerism, call for new business models of media companies and cultural industries. The course includes the discussion of such industries as fashion, design, and music, among others, focusing on innovation, recommendation systems and finally the relation between creativity and Artificial Intelligence. Field studies and site visits in Italy, as well as guest lectures by people who work in the creative industry, will be planned to add the experiential learning component to the course.