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Connected Media Practices
MDST 5001
What happens when we stop taking the existing technologies that connect us for granted? This course is an invitation to envision creative, transformative infrastructure for social change. By recovering forgotten histories of early digital networks, and turning a critical eye to the networks around us today, we will design tools and economies for community-based networks to come.
Instructor
Nathan Schneider
nathan.schneider@colorado.edu
Armory 1B24, meetings by appointment via email
Website: nathanschneider.info
Objectives
- Think critically and historically about networked society and economies
- Develop a repertoire for strategic engagement with digital infrastructure
- Practice social entrepreneurship and teamwork
Expectations
Coursework
Throughout the semester, each student will (as a percentage of the total course grade):
- Each week, turn in on Canvas before class time and be prepared to share in class a Connection (25%), which includes:
- a pitch for an entrepreneurial idea related to the week's topic, including a problem, an opportunity, and a value proposition
- a explanatory, critical reaction to the assigned materials, in several paragraphs with evidence of close examination
- Be an active participant in every class discussion and demonstrate thoughtful engagement with the course materials, augmenting them with relevant sources (20%)
- At one class meeting during the semester, develop an imaginative way to lead the discussion of the week's assigned materials (10%)
- 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.
Whitepaper project
The core of this course is a group-based project to propose, in detail, a networked enterprise for social impact. This may involve the development of a concept for a new network or a recommendation for dramatically improving an existing one. The whole class may work on a single project together, or students may work in groups of at least two. Plan for considerable collaboration time outside of class. Groups of students will each produce a whitepaper outlining the structure, function, and economy of their proposed enterprise. (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 enterprises have addressed similar challenges and what options could be explored
- Present 1-2 specific, plausible strategies, weighing their costs and benefits
- Engage with at least 2 assigned materials from the course in a sophisticated fashion
The whitepaper project is a process, not just a result, including (with grades as a percentage of the project total):
- Research plan of 500–700 words, along with 3 Platform Design Toolkit worksheets (15%)
- Complete draft in time for peer review (15%)
- Participation in peer review of two fellow students' sections (10%)
- Final draft, due on the last day of class (50%)
- Group participation, based on anonymous feedback from collaborators (10%)
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 whitepaper project. Feedback is anonymous to fellow students. Reflect on 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. The final determination of this last grade will be made by the instructor, informed by peer feedback.
Grading
Based on the stated point structure, grades will be awarded as follows: A (94-100), A- (90-93), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (63-66), D- (60-62), F (0-59). The minimum passing grade is 60 for undergraduates and 70 for graduate students.
Terms and conditions
Together, we agree to:
- Work together to foster a respectful, mature, convivial community based on discussion, accommodation, and attention
- Adhere to all university policies regarding academic integrity, accessibility, behavior, discrimination, misconduct, and religious observances; 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
If you find yourself in a position where lack of access to food, housing, health care, or other basic needs interferes with your studies, consider seeking support from the Dean of Students and, if you feel comfortable doing so, your instructor. We will work to assist you however we can.
Calendar
All due dates are at 9 a.m. in the appropriate Canvas assignment:
- Research plan: October 8
- Whitepaper draft: November 26
- Complete whitepaper peer reviews: November 30
- Whitepaper final: December 10
Units
The units of the course probe strategies for community-based connectedness. For historical perspective, throughout we will be reading from:
- July Malloy (ed.), Social Media Archeology and Poetics (MIT Press, 2016)
As we develop our whitepaper projects, we will also make use of:
- Simone Cicero, The Platform Design Toolkit
Other assigned materials are organized on a weekly basis as follows.
Social: Building community
- In Social Media Archeology, chapter 1: Judy Malloy, “The Origins of Social Media”
- Mark Zuckerberg, “Building Global Community” (February 16, 2017)
- Hannah Arendt, “The Public and the Private Realm,” from The Human Condition (1958)
Producers: Means of production
- In Social Media Archeology, chapter 2: Paul E. Ceruzzi, “The Personal Computer and Social Media”
- 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)
- Deen Freelon, Lori Lopez, Meredith D. Clark, and Sarah J. Jackson, How Black Twitter and Other Social Media Communities Interact with Mainstream News (Knight Foundation, 2018)
Enterprise: Choosing economies
- In Social Media Archeology, chapter 3: Howard Rheingold, “Daily Life in Cyberspace: How the Computerized Counterculture Built a New Kind of Place”
- Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson (New York, Greenwood)
- Jennifer Brandel, Mara Zepeda, Astrid Scholz, and Aniyia Williams, “Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break” (March 8, 2017)
Protocols: Rules for freedom and constraint
- Tim Berners-Lee, “Information Management: A Proposal” (March 1989–May 1990)
- Fred Wilson, “The Golden Age of Open Protocols,” AVC (July 31, 2016)
- Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (MIT Press, 2014): Introduction
- Brian McCullough, “Claire L. Evans, Author of _Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet_,” Internet History Podcast (March 4, 2018)
Platforms: Points of connection, points of failure
- Jose van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (Oxford University Press, 2013): chapters 1, 2, and a third of your choosing
- Juliet Schor, “The Platform Economy,” Policy Network (May 17, 2018)
- Juho Makkonen and Cristóbal Gracia, The Lean Marketplace: A Practical Guide to Building a Successful Online Marketplace Business (Sharetribe, 2018): choose any 2 chapters
Governments and governance: Or, governmentality
- In Social Media Archeology, chapter 8: Annick Bureaud, “Art and Minitel in France in the 1980s”
- Yu-Tang Hsiao, Shu-Yang Lin, Audrey Tang, Darshana Narayanan, and Claudina Sarahe, “vTaiwan: An Empirical Study of Open Consultation Process in Taiwan, SocArXiv (July 4, 2018)
- Zeynep Tufekci, ”How Social Media Took Us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump,“ MIT Technology Review (August 14, 2018)
- 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)
Access: Haves and have nots
- In Social Media Archeology, section V: “Community Networking”
- Virginia Eubanks, ”The Digital Poorhouse,“ Harper's (January 2018)
- Alan Mills, Nanjira Sambuli, Joana Varon, and Renata Avila, ”Digital Colonialism: A Global Overview,“ re:publica, Berlin (May 2, 2015)
- World Wide Web Consortium: ”Accessibility Principles“ and ”Stories of Web Users“
Attention: Who watches the watchers?
- Cathy Hannabach, ”Simone Browne on Resisting Surveillance & Creative Collaborations,“ Imagine Otherwise (May 4, 2016)
- Jodi Dean, ”Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics,“ Cultural Politics 1, no. 1 (2005)
- Tim Wu, ”Blind Spot: The Attention Economy and the Law,“ Antitrust Law Journal (forthcoming)
Money: You are being bought
- Brett Scott, ”The War on Cash,“ The Long and Short, August 19, 2016
- Manoush Zomorodi and Jen Poyant, ”Blockchain. Block What?!,“ ZigZag (June 13, 2018)
- Aaron Wright and Primavera De Filippi, ”Decentralized Blockchain Technology and the Rise of Lex Cryptographia,“ SSRN Scholarly Paper (March 10, 2015)
Education: You are being taught
- In Social Media Archeology, chapter 5: David R. Woolley, “PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community”
- Ivan Illich, ”Learning Webs,“ in Deschooling Society (1970)
- Smolenski, Natalie, Academic Credentials in an Era of Digital Decentralization (Learning Machine, 2016).
Play: As opposed to what isn't
- Mary Flanagan, ”Introduction to Critical Play,“ in Critical Play: Radical Game Design (MIT Press, 2009)
- Veronica Belmont, ”Press Play,“ IRL podcast (July 16, 2018)
- How to DiscoTech, Detroit Digital Justice Coalition zine no. 4 (2012)
Memory: Which is really everything
- In Social Media Archeology, chapter 28: Judith Donath, “Epilogue: Slow Machines and Utopian Dreams”
- Safiya Umoja Noble, ”Google Search: Hyper-visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible,“ InVisible Culture no. 19 (Fall 2013)
- Jay Kirby and Lori Emerson, ”As If, or, Using Media Archaeology to Reimagine Past, Present, and Future (HTML), International Journal of Communication 10 (2016)
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 ]