Connected Media Practices

MDST 5001

the real engine of change is never “critical mass”; dramatic and systemic change always begins with “critical connections.”
—Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution (2012)

This course is a critical, collective immersion into the theories and practices of social networking, online and off. Rather than simply taking established platforms like Facebook and Snapchat for granted, we will consider a wide variety of networks in order to expand our tactical repertoires. We will study the dominant structures and business models of the social-media ecosystem in order to spread messages effectively. But will we also explore ways of transforming that ecosystem by creating networks of our own.

Students need not have prior experience with particular networked platforms, but they should expect to teach themselves some. Throughout the course, students will conduct action research toward developing a new platform or improving an existing one.

Nathan Schneider
nathan.schneider@colorado.edu
Armory 1B24, meetings by appointment via email
Website: nathanschneider.info

• Learn to think critically and tactically about networked society
• Cultivate habits of contributing to and protecting a commons
• Practice entrepreneurship and teamwork

Throughout the semester, each student will (as a percentage of the total course grade):

• Take part in annotation and discussion of assigned material through the Hypothesis tool, making frequent and substantive contributions (15%)
• Turn in (in the D2L discussion by class time and bring to class) a “connection” each week—a reflection on one side of a piece of paper, and perhaps a show-and-tell object, that connects assigned materials to the student's platform project (25%)
• Be an active participant in every class discussion and demonstrate thoughtful engagement with the course material, augmenting the course material with relevant sources (15%)
  • Online students only: By Thursday morning each week, contribute at least 3 substantial comments on fellow students' “connection” posts that engage with assigned materials
• Hold at least one in-person meeting with instructor during the course, by appointment (5%)

If you cannot attend a class meeting or participate online on a given week, please discuss the reason ahead of time with the instructor. Otherwise it will affect the participation grade.

The core of this course is an action-research project in which students work on a digital platform that serves the university community. This may involve the development of a concept for a new platform or a recommendation for improving an existing one. The whole class may work on a single project together, or students may work in groups of at least two. For the platform project, groups of students will each produce a whitepaper outlining the structure, function, and economy of an online platform. (40%)

Each student will:

• Take responsibility for one section of their group's whitepaper, between 1,800 and 2,000 words, including relevant visual aids, following appropriate citation standards
• Articulate a challenge or problem and present background research on how other platforms have addressed similar challenges and what options could be explored
• Describe action-research methods and findings
• Present 1-3 specific, plausible solutions appropriate to the platform, with pros and cons
• Engage with at least 2 examples assigned content from the course in a sophisticated fashion

The platform project is a process, not just a result, including (with grades as a percentage of the project total):

• Approved proposal for project and role (10%)
• Research plan of 600-800 words, along with 3 Platform Design Toolkit worksheets (10%)
• Participation in peer review of two fellow students' sections outside of your group (10%)
• Final draft, due on the last day of class (50%)
• Anonymous feedback from collaborators on project contributions (20%)

Sections will be evaluated individually. But to reflect our accountability to one another, all students are expected to help in evaluating one another's contributions to the platform project. Evaluations are anonymous to fellow students. Evaluate peers' projects based on the criteria in the Expectations section of this syllabus, as well as based on the student's contributions to the collegiality of the team effort.

Each student is expected to:

• Work together to foster a respectful, mature, convivial community based on discussion, accommodation, and attention
• Adhere to all university policies regarding academic integrity, behavior, and accessibility; we take responsibility for understanding them and the relevant procedures
• Respect the privacy of one another, keeping any materials or statements shared in class confidential unless permission is granted to do otherwise
• Refrain from the use of screen devices during class, except upon agreement with the instructor or for reasons of accessibility

Fall 2017. All due dates are at 9 am.

• Platform project topic and role proposal due (in D2L discussion): 9/18
• Research plan due (in D2L discussion): 10/16
• Whitepaper draft (in D2L discussion): 12/1
• Complete whitepaper peer reviews (in D2L discussion): 12/4
• Whitepaper final due (in D2L dropbox): 12/11

The units of the course probe the themes of connectedness and networks, from offline contingency to the online self. Throughout we will be reading from:

• Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary, Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make them Work for You (W. W. Norton, 2016)

In addition to providing a window into the conceptual universe of the dominant corporate networks, this will likely provide useful guidance for the platform project.

As students develop their platform projects, they will also make use of:

• Simone Cicero, The Platform Design Toolkit

Other assigned materials are organized on a weekly basis as follows.

• Jose van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (Oxford University Press, 2013)
• E. Alex Jung, “Wages for Facebook,” Dissent (Spring 2014)
  • WagesForFacebook.com
• Community Research Lab, A Short Guide to Community Based Participatory Action Research (Advancement Project - Healthy City, 2011)
  • Optional further reading: Stephen Kemmis, Robin McTaggart, and Rhonda Nixon, The Action Research Planner: Doing Critical Participatory Action Research (Springer, 2014)

Platform Revolution: chapter 1

• Hannah Arendt, “The Public and the Private Realm,” from The Human Condition (1958)
• Jodi Dean, “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics,” Cultural Politics 1, no. 1 (2005)

Platform Revolution: chapter 2

• “Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet,” RAND Corporation.
• Ted Nelson, Computer Lib / Dream Machines (1974)
  • Excerpts from Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (eds.), The New Media Reader (MIT Press, 2003)
  • What happened? Gary Wolf, “The Curse of Xanadu,” Wired (June 1, 2005)
• Manuel Castells, “Preface to the 2010 Edition,” in The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
• Lori Emerson, “What’s Wrong with the Internet and How to Fix It: an Interview with Internet Pioneer John Day,” Ctrl-Z 5 (2015)
  • Bonus: Jay Kirby and Lori Emerson, “As If, or, Using Media Archaeology to Reimagine Past, Present, and Future (HTML), International Journal of Communication 10 (2016)

Platform Revolution: chapter 3

• Jeremy Adam Smith, ”How to Design the Commons (or, Elinor Ostrom Explained!),“ Shareable (December 10, 2009)
• Federici, Silvia, ”Feminism and the Politics of the Commons,“ The Commoner (2011)
• Yochai Benkler, “Introduction,” in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006)
• Gabriella Coleman, ”The Life of a Free Software Hacker,“ in Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton University Press, 2013)

Platform Revolution: chapter 4

• Tim Herrera, ”How to See What the Internet Knows About You (And How to Stop It),“ The New York Times (July 3, 2017)
• Film: Terms and Conditions May Apply (requires campus or VPN connection)
• Gary T. Marx, ”Humpty Dumpty Was Wrong - Consistency in Meaning Matters: Some Definitions of Privacy, Publicity, Secrecy, and Other Family Members,“ Secrecy and Society 1, no. 1 (November 2016)
• Joseph Turow, Michael Hennessey, and Nora Draper, The Tradeoff Fallacy: How Marketers Are Misrepresenting American Consumers and Opening Them Up to Exploitation, report from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania (June 2015)
• Elaine McArdle, ”The New Age of Surveillance, Harvard Law Today (May 10, 2016)

Platform Revolution: chapter 5

• Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson (New York, Greenwood)
• Rachel Botsman, “The currency of the new economy is trust,” TED Talk (June 2012)
• Juliet Schor, “Debating the Sharing Economy,” Great Transition Initiative (October 2014)
• Lilly C Irani and M. Six Silberman, “Turkopticon: Interrupting Worker Invisibility on Amazon Mechanical Turk,” Proceedings of CHI (2013).

Platform Revolution: chapter 6

• Jo Freeman, “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” The Second Wave 2, no. 1
• Gina Neff and David Stark, “Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era,” in Philip E.N. Howard and Steve Jones, eds., Society Online: The Internet in Context (Sage, 2003)
• Abby Fichtner, “Agile Vs. Lean: Yeah Yeah, What's the Difference?” Hacker Chick (January 2012)
• Roger Hodge, “First, Let's Get Rid of All the Bosses,” The New Republic (October 4, 2015)
• John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “Design Elements and Challenges,” in Swarming and the Future of Conflict (RAND Corporation, 2000)

Platform Revolution: chapter 7

• Janelle Orsi, “The Next Sharing Economy,” YouTube (October 17, 2014)
• Maira Sutton, “What Is a Platform Co-op?,” Shareable (August 16, 2016)
• Danny Spitzberg, “#GoCoop: How the #BuyTwitter Campaign Could Signal a New Co-op Economy,” The Cooperative Business Journal (summer 2017)
• Six Silberman, “Reading Elinor Ostrom in Silicon Valley: Exploring Institutional Diversity on the Internet,” Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work (November 2016)

Platform Revolution: chapter 8

• Brett Scott, “The War on Cash,” The Long and Short, August 19, 2016
• Bitcoin origin stories:
  • Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin v0.1 released,” The Cryptography Mailing List (January 9, 2009)
  • Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency,” P2P Foundation Ning (February 11, 2009)
  • GoWestBTC, “An Ode to Satoshi Nakamoto,” The Bitcoin Trader (December 15, 2011)
• Nathan Schneider, “After the Bitcoin Gold Rush,” The New Republic (February 24, 2015)
• Timothy B. Lee, “Ethereum, explained: why Bitcoin's stranger cousin is now worth $1 billion,” Vox (May 24, 2016)
• Meghan, “Bitcoin Doesn't Need Women,” Bitcoin Not Bombs (January 8, 2014)

Platform Revolution: chapter 9

• Jane McGonigal, “Gaming Can Make a Better World,” TEDTalk (2010)
• Ian Bogost, “Gamification Is Bullshit” (August 8, 2011)
• Sam Anderson, “Just One More Game ...,” The New York Times Magazine (April 4, 2012)
• Greg Costikyan, “I Have No Words & I Must Design,” Interactive Fantasy 2 (1994)

Platform Revolution: chapter 10

• John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” (February 8, 1996)
• Giorgio Agamben, “A Brief History of the State of Exception,” from State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
• John Cheney-Lippold, “A New Algorithmic Identity: Soft Biopolitics and the Modulation of Control,” Theory, Culture & Society 28, no. 6 (2011)
• Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument,” American Political Science Review (2017)
• Dave Karpf, “Will the Real Psychometric Targeters Please Stand Up?,” Civicist (February 1, 2017)

Platform Revolution: chapter 11

• danah boyd and Eszter Hargittai, “Connected and concerned: Variation in parents' online safety concerns,” Policy & Internet (September 2013)
• Gabriella Coleman, “Our Weirdness Is Free,” Triple Canopy 15 (December 1, 2011)
• J. Nathan Matias, “A toxic web: what the Victorians can teach us about online abuse,” The Guardian (April 18, 2016)
• Coraline Ada Ehmke, “Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub” (July 5, 2017)
• Mark Zuckerberg, “Building Global Community” (February 16, 2017)

Platform Revolution: chapter 12

• Katy Waldman, “Frontiers of the Stuplime: Sitting in on UPenn's controversial seminar in 'Wasting Time on the Internet,'” Slate (April 27, 2015)
• Geert Lovink, “The Principle of Notworking,” Concepts in Critical Internet Culture (February 24, 2005)

This syllabus is a living document. Any part of it may be brought up for discussion and modified by a consensus of those present during any official class period.

[ Notes ]