PhD on the Information and Knowledge Society

As a research centre, the IN3 plays home and offers support to the PhD on the Information and Knowledge Society Programme, the only PhD offered by the UOC. Offered for the first time in 2000, this programme was one of the first PhDs created in this field of research and, indeed, the first to be offered in its entirety over the internet.

The rise and constant updating of information and communication technologies during the second half of the last century has seen them enter all spheres of human activity: culture, economy, education, media, business management, public services administration and the apparatus of the political system. Analysis of the uses of these technologies in the different spheres and of the profound transformations that accompany them is key for understanding today’s society and developing professional activities therein.

The links between the different social, economic, political and cultural systems mean that the traditional disciplinary barriers have to be overcome so as to be able to conduct a thorough and in-depth analysis. Thus, this PhD programme is based on an interdisciplinary perspective that involves different theoretical standpoints and different methodological tools.

Specifically, the PhD on the Information and Knowledge Society, designed in line with the directives established by the Royal Decree regulating postgraduate courses (Royal Decree 56/2005, January 21 2005), bases this interdisciplinary perspective on the relationship between the PhD Programme and the Research Groups recognised by the UOC. Consequently, these groups offer a limited number of places, be they at a distance or in-house, on their research lines or projects.

These places offer the students that join the conditions needed to carry out academic research that leads to the submission and defence of a PhD thesis on any of the aspects that characterise the Information and Knowledge Society.