King's College London

The Digital Economy MSc is an interdisciplinary programme that critically analyses how digital technologies are changing the ways we work, produce, exchange, and collaborate. The programme aims to approach and analyse the big questions facing global society today. With a global focus on labour, markets, platforms, and institutions, you'll gain a big picture perspective on the transformations being brought about through digital technologies and you'll gain the tools needed to respond to the challenges facing our world.

This Digital Economy MSc is designed to teach you a solid knowledge and understanding of how digital artefacts are economically unique, how they lead to innovation, transform businesses and economies, and how they impact on broader contemporary society. You’ll learn about the main critical and theoretical approaches to the analysis of digital economies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives at macro and micro levels, and discover how to apply this to the management of digital artefacts and to your career.

The beginning of this digital economy master’s tackles the subject from a micro perspective. The required module will focus on the impact of digital technologies, like open-source software, to discuss their implications on people, communities, companies, and ecosystems. You will consider theories that address commons-based peer production, orders of worth, transaction cost theory, and beyond. At the same time, you’ll learn how to establish and apply digital initiatives, critically analyse existing innovation strategies, and scrutinise the ethics of digital creation. Topics covered include the significance of digital divides, the social role of digital payments systems, the experience of modern gig work, critical accounts of entrepreneurship, and the construction of legitimacy for novel technologies.

The second required module will shift your perspective to the macro and teach a historical, critical and systemic reflection on the digital economy. You’ll consider the challenges of rising tech companies and contemplate their political economy when debating major topics. You will be able to discuss topics such as addiction and attention, the regulatory impacts of technologies like generative AI, surveillance capitalism, and data colonialism while exploring the role of power in the digital economy and how new inequalities of power are emerging. By the end, you’ll be prepared to explain these changes and outline systematic connections across the digital economy as a whole.

Thanks to a broad list of interdisciplinary optional modules, you can curate the rest of your Digital Economy MSc learning to specialise in the areas that interest you most. For example, you could choose to learn more about artificial intelligence and its impact on society. Or take a module on digital innovation and the various sources, uses, and impacts of these innovations. You could broaden your expertise with modules in digital media and marketing, music, and sound in digital societies or curating and preserving digital culture, or beyond.

Your digital economy master’s will conclude with your research dissertation. This gives you the opportunity to gather your own research and become an expert in a topic that interests you.