The objective of this course is to examine the individual (subject) of the modern, late-modern, and digital era within a conceptual and critical framework across philosophical, sociological, and psychopolitical dimensions. Within the scope of the course, it aims to analyze in depth at the doctoral level the transformative effects of mass media and digital media infrastructures on individual identity construction, desire mechanisms, alienation, narcissism, and the performance society. It is intended for students to integrate the subjectification and objectification processes of the modern age with media theories to transform them into original interdisciplinary academic paradigms, and to design independent doctoral research using advanced methodologies.

The course traces the individual starting from the configuration of the modern individual in the Enlightenment period through the panoptic society, disciplinary society, liquid modernity, culture of narcissism, network society, and on the axis of "performance society" and "psychopolitics" as conceptualized by Byung-Chul Han. How media and communication technologies restructure the individual's relationship with time, space, body, and the other is problematized under the headings of digital surveillance, data exploitation, and algorithmic identity management. The course positions the individual of the modern age beyond being a passive mass element or a mere user, but as an ontological subject at the center of current practices of domination and freedom.