MIT 298: Interpreting Digital Artifacts

This course explores digital artifacts as cultural objects embedded in the fabric of the internet, requiring new interpretive frameworks to fully understand their significance. I enjoyed learning about how people are influenced and controlled by codes embedded in media and how they shape their perceptions and ways of thinking. 

A key theme in the course is how evolving digital technologies, particularly beauty AI, reshape societal beauty standards. As artificial intelligence increasingly curates, edits, and even generates images of beauty, it raises critical questions about how these encoded ideals are perceived and internalized. For example, the meaning-making process through Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model explains how audiences structure, transmit, and interpret messages. 

One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the course is how media consumption is not passive but an active negotiation process. For example, audience interpretations of advertisements or social media content are not always aligned with the creator’s intent. Understanding these dynamics deepens our awareness of how digital artifacts shape public discourse and influence social norms. The idea that Twitter can function as a racial artifact is particularly intriguing, highlighting how digital platforms encode and reinforce social hierarchies. This course fundamentally restructures how we view online media, emphasizing that digital spaces are not neutral but deeply embedded in historical and cultural contexts.