Nathan Schneider is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Economies Design Lab and the MA program in Media and Public Engagement. He is the author of four books, most recently Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life, published by University of California Press in 2024, and Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy, published by Bold Type Books in 2018. He edited Vitalik Buterin’s book Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains and co-edited Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet. Recent scholarship has been published in New Media & Society, Feminist Media Studies, the Georgetown Law Technology Review, and Media, Culture & Society, among other journals. He has also reported for publications including Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and others, along with regular columns for America, a national Catholic magazine. He has lectured at universities including Columbia, Fordham, Harvard, MIT, NYU, the University of Bologna, and Yale. He serves on the boards of the Metagovernance Project, Start.coop, Waging Nonviolence, and Zebras Unite. Follow his work on social media at @ntnsndr or at his website, nathanschneider.info.
keywords
media industries, cooperative economics, media studies, social movements, online governance
MDST 1002 - Introduction to Social Media
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Spring 2022 / Spring 2023 / Fall 2023
Introduces students to network structures and principles, the technology and infrastructures that allow them to flourish, and the cultures that grow up through and around them. Explores how social media enables community, how it assembles and empowers agents of change and how design informs individual and group behavior.
MDST 2011 - Disruptive Entrepreneurship in the Internet's New Economies
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2021 / Fall 2023
Grapples with the disruptive business models that drive the online economy: both the dominant ones and the alternatives vying to transform it. In addition to the Silicon Valley model, this course explores lesser known internet economies around the world and proposals for a more equitable online future. Meets Practice Course Requirement.
MDST 2012 - Hacker Culture
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2018 / Spring 2020 / Spring 2021 / Spring 2024
Chronicles the evolution of hacker culture from its origins as a geeky subculture to a criminal underground to its adaptation by CEOs. Considers how hacker formations sometimes represent a new kind of politics, sometimes a rejection of politics. Explores the contested figure of the hacker in the past, present and science-fiction of the internet. Meets Practice Course Requirement.
MDST 2046 - Future Histories of Technology
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Fall 2024
This class explores both literature about future technologies and literary technologies that move across periods, regions, and disciplines. Our cultural and historical approach to future histories of technology will illuminate how race, gender and sexuality, class, and nationality structure seemingly neutral research and development, usage, and innovation. Ultimately, our goal is to see how we�re not passive consumers but active participants in reimagining the present and future of technology. Degree credit not granted for this course and ENGL 2046.
MDST 3002 - Digital Culture and Politics
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Fall 2021 / Fall 2024
Examines issues at the intersection of digital media, culture and politics, such as regulation and network architecture, piracy and hacking, and grassroots activism. Engage with a range of theories about cultural politics, democracy, liberalism and neo-liberalism in relation to digital information and communication technologies.
MDST 4931 - Internship
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Spring 2018 / Spring 2020 / Summer 2021 / Spring 2022 / Summer 2022 / Fall 2022 / Spring 2023 / Summer 2023 / Fall 2023 / Spring 2024 / Summer 2024 / Fall 2024
MDST 5001 - Connected Media Practices
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2018 / Fall 2019
Provides a crucial frame through which students understand the evolution of film, television and gaming in the digital era. Explores an impending revolution in how screen media are created, circulated and consumed. Relates to a larger trend across the media industries to integrate digital technology and socially networked communication with traditional screen media practices.
MDST 5002 - Media Activism and Public Engagement
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2018 / Spring 2021 / Spring 2022 / Spring 2023 / Spring 2024
Explores politics of media activism. Relies on survey of existing theory and scholarship on media activism and close analyses of activist practices within both old and new media and on local, national and global scale. Special attention paid to questions of relativity and efficacy and value of media activism as both aesthetic and political activity.
