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Media Activism and Public Engagement
MDST 5002
Depending on whom you ask, media-powered activism can sound like either a silver bullet or a lost cause. It's often both at the same time and more in between. Through hands-on examination of the strategies and tactics of movements, past and present, we'll discover how media can shape social change and how we can become more savvy media practitioners ourselves.
The central themes of this course are power, agency, and narrative in media for social change. Whom does a particular media choice empower, and whom does it render as a passive consumer? How do we choose our heroes, and what are the consequences of those choices? How can we tell stories of change that invite people to take part in changing the world? Our work will consist of close reading, familiarizing ourselves with relevant debates, and honing our own practice.
The course consists of two concurrent sections—one in the classroom and one entirely online. While distinct, the two sections will also interact and inform each other's learning.
Instructor
Nathan Schneider
nathan.schneider@colorado.edu
Armory 1B24, meetings by appointment via email
Website: nathanschneider.info
Objectives
- Cultivate habits of media activism by doing it through passionate, strategic, pragmatic advocacy
- Analyze theories and lessons from a wide range of social-change campaigns throughout history and around the world
- Create a ready-to-deploy media intervention through collaboration with a social-change agent
Expectations
Weekly
Students are expected to complete the weekly reading assignments. Some are fairly easy, some are very difficult; if you have trouble, please at least put your best effort on display. This does not necessarily mean microscopic reading of every page, but it does mean engaging rigorously with portions of particular interest, as well as familiarizing oneself with the works as a whole and thinking critically about their interconnections.
For students working off-campus, many readings are from paywalled journals and will require the use of a campus VPN.
Interventions
Each week, students are expected to turn in what we'll call an Intervention. These Interventions are simple, informal media sketches that contain a) a challenge or problem related to the week's texts and b) an outline for an original strategy that addresses it. Interventions need not be realistic for students to carry out; students may imagine themselves as representing better-resourced organizations, real or imaginary. The purpose of this assignment is to explore our own sense of agency and to exercise adventuresome thinking. Over the course of the semester, a student's Interventions may address various topics, or they can connect in a way that builds toward the final project.
Projects may take the form of a drawing, infographic, game, video, skit, text, art installation, business plan, social media campaign, or other media, digital or otherwise. In any case, they must be submitted digitally as a new thread in the appropriate discussion topic for each week's unit.
Discussions
Classroom students should be active participants and make contributions to the oral discussion that reflect strenuous engagement with the assigned texts; inform the instructor ahead of time about any missed classes. Online students should make at least four substantial comments on fellow students' Interventions that reflect strenuous engagement with the assigned texts. Classroom students are welcome, but not required, to participate in the online discussions.
Final project
Each student will complete a final project that is ready to deploy upon completion, in partnership with a relevant organization, community, or company. Projects might consist of anything in the same range of media as the weekly Interventions—except, rather than mere sketches, this project must be fully implemented.
After discussing the topic with the instructor or teaching assistant, students will turn in a proposal that explains and justifies the project's objective and medium. The proposal, as well as the final project itself, should reflect a sophisticated grasp of the themes and texts of the course. In particular, projects should convey an analysis of power and agency through which they intervene, resulting in a plausible case for making effective social change.
Students will constructively review complete drafts of each other's projects before submitting the final draft. Some students may choose to form groups of connected projects, but each student is responsible for turning in their own contribution independently.
Evaluation
Coursework is evaluated according the following rubrics:
- Weekly Interventions (30%)
- Demonstrate a sophisticated grasp of one or more assigned texts
- Communicate a problem and a creative proposal by which to address it
- Practice adventuresome thinking in both concept and presentation, using compelling media techniques to communicate the proposal
- Weekly discussions (30%)
- Engage actively and strenuously with the bulk of each unit's assigned texts over the course of that unit's comments, with direct quotations, evidence of close reading, and thoughtful analysis
- Interact respectfully and critically with fellow students, demonstrating careful attention to others and presenting reasoned articulations of one's views
- Classroom students: weekly attendance, consistent participation in conversations; online students: at least four substantive comments each week
- Final project: (40%)
- Proposal: (15%)
- Explain and justify the project idea in a 1,400-to-1,600-word text with scholarly citation standards and a high degree of stylistic quality
- Describe the community collaboration underway; propose an intended medium, and scope of project deliverables, including rationale for each
- Articulate a clear objective for impact, reflecting an understanding of the intended audience, a relevant theory of power, and a theory of agency; include strong evidence of background research, citing relevant scholarly and primary resources, while engaging with at least two assigned texts from the course
- Project draft: (5%)
- Complete a draft of the project that meets the expectations discussed in the proposal process
- Peer review: (5%)
- Provide feedback for at least three fellow students' drafts, of at least two paragraphs each
- Offer constructive appreciation, critique, and recommendations on each draft
- Align comments to the terms of the assignment as well as the students' own goals
- Final draft: (15%)
- Ensure this draft is polished, compelling, informed by peer review, and ready to deploy
- Reflect rigorous engagement with course themes and assigned texts
- Demonstrate a plausible strategy for circulation, audience, and social change
Final grades
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.
Schedule
Each week:
- Interventions are due in the appropriate online discussion unit at noon on Mondays, Mountain Time
- Online students' discussion posts on a given unit are due at noon on Tuesdays
For the final project:
- Consult with the instructor (or, for online students, the teaching assistant) on the final project concept, via email or meeting, by noon on Monday, February 26
- Proposals are due in the online dropbox at noon on Monday, March 12
- Drafts are due in the online discussion at noon on Friday, April 13
- Peer review comments are due in the online discussion at noon on Monday, April 16
- Final drafts are due in the online dropbox at noon on the last day of class—Monday, April 30
Agreements
- We will work together to foster a respectful, accessible community based on creativity, accommodation, and attention.
- When problems arise, we will seek to address them collaboratively—first through dialogue, then through revision of these agreements, then through recourse to the instructor, and then to administrators.
- We respect one another's privacy. Content shared in class or online will not be shared with anyone outside of the class without permission.
- We will refrain from the use of screen devices in the classroom, except upon agreement with the instructor or for reasons of accessibility.
- We adhere to all university policies regarding accessibility and academic integrity; we take responsibility for understanding them and the relevant procedures.
Units
Throughout the course we will be reading selections from:
- Juman Abujbara et al. (eds.), Beautiful Rising: Creative Resistance from the Global South (OR Books, 2018).
This is the only text that students should obtain in print form, although much of the content is also available on the project's website. All students should also take a chance to read this article, which is the basis of the exercise in the first day of class:
- Bill Moyer, “The Movement Action Plan: A Strategic Framework Describing the Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements,” The Dandelion (1987)
1. Power
- Gene Sharp, The Role of Power in Nonviolent Struggle (The Albert Einstein Institution, 1990)
- See also: Gene Sharp, 198 Methods of Nonviolent Struggle (1978); Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, “Drop Your Weapons: When and Why Civil Resistance Works,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 4 (2014)
- Donella Meadows, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” (Donella Meadows Institute, 1999)
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (University of Illinois Press, 1988)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Pillars of Power”
- “Power Mapping”
- “Postcolonialism”
2. Story
- “Intro to Story-Based Strategy,” The Center for Story-Based Strategy
- Marshall Ganz, “Public Narrative, Collective Action, and Power,” in Sina Odugbemi and Taeku Lee (eds.), Accountability Through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action (The World Bank, 2011)
- Francesca Polletta and Pang Ching Bobby Chen, “Narrative and Social Movements,” in Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology (Oxford University Press, 2012)
- Ed Rampell, “Indigenous Storytelling at Standing Rock,” Earth Island Journal (July 7, 2017)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Public Narrative”
- “Change Is the Only Constant”
3. Community
- Francesca Polletta, “Participatory Democracy's Moment,” Journal of International Affairs 68, no. 1 (2014)
- Paul W. Speer and Joseph Hughey, “Community Organizing: An Ecological Route to Empowerment and Power,” American Journal of Community Psychology 23, no. 5 (1995)
- David Paul Nord, “The Evangelical Origins of Mass Media in America, 1815-1835,” Journalism Monographs 88 (May 1984)
- Alicia Garza, “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.” The Feminist Wire. October 7, 2014.
Beautiful Rising:
- “Seek Safety in Support Networks”
- “Al Faza'a”
- “Spectrum of Allies”
4. Protagonism
Choose between one of the following pairs of films (and a critical essay) with an eye to how agency is expressed.
First, resistance to slavery:
- Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg (2012)
- Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino (2012)
- Adolph Reed, “The James Brown Theory of Black Liberation,” Jacobin 18 (Summer 2015)
Second, labor organizing:
- On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan (1954)
- The Salt of the Earth, directed by Herbert J. Biberman (1954)
- Enid Sefcovica, “Cultural Memory and the Cultural Legacy of Individualism and Community in Two Classic Films about Labor Unions,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, no. 3 (2002)
Third, climate change:
- An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim (2006)
- This Changes Everything, directed by Avi Lewis (2015)
- Elizabeth Kolbert, “Can Climate Change Cure Capitalism?,” The New York Review of Books (December 4, 2014)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Schools of Struggle”
- “The Onion Tool”
5. Confession
Choose one of the following classic memoirs:
- Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness (Harper & Brothers, 1952)
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1925–28)
- Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Lawrence Hill Books, 2001)
Beautiful Rising:
- “SMART Objectives”
Complete final project consultation
6. Fact
- Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3. (1988)
- Edward Tufte, “Pen and Parchment: The Beautiful Evidence of Medieval Drawings,” Metropolitan Museum of Art (Aug 10, 2009)
- A helpful summary of Tufte's design principles: Al Globus, “Principles of Information Display for Visualization Practitioners” (November 28, 1994)
- Rob Nixon, “Slow violence and environmental storytelling,” NiemanStoryboard (June 13, 2011)
- Liz Barry, “vTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberpunk Frontier of Democracy,” Civicist (August 11, 2016)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Zapatista Caravan”
7. Art
- Ange Mlinko, “Craft vs. Conscience,” Poetry (July 10, 2008)
- Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 1985)
- Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents,” Artforum (February 2006)
- Nick Nissley, Steven S. Taylor and Linda Houden, “The Politics of Performance in Organizational Theatre-Based Training and Interventions,” Organizational Studies 25, no. 5 (2004)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Music Video”
- “Change a Name to Change the Game”
Final project proposals due
8. Play
- Mary Flanagan, “Introduction to Critical Play,” in Critical Play: Radical Game Design (MIT Press, 2009)
- David Graeber, “On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets,” address to Anthropology, Art and Activism Seminar Series at Brown University's Watson Institute (December 6, 2005)
- The Yes Men Are Revolting, directed by Laura Nix and The Yes Men (2015)
- Luke O'Brien, “The Making of an American Nazi,” The Atlantic (December 2017)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Replacing Cops with Mimes”
- “Use Humor to Undermine Authority”
9. Mediums
- Seeta Peña Gangadharan, “Media Justice and Communication Rights,” in Padovani and Calabrese (eds.), Communication Rights and Social Justice: Historical Accounts of Transnational Mobilizations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
- Ann Komarom, “The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat,” Slavic Review 63, no. 3 (Autumn 2004)
- Laura Flanders, Next System Media: An Urgent Necessity (The Next System Project, 2017)
- Mike Ludwig, “Malkia Cyril: Net Neutrality Is the Civil Rights Act for the Internet,” Truthout (February 24, 2015)
Beautiful Rising:
- “The Global South”
- “Neoliberalism”
10. Bureaucracy
- Alyson Krueger, “The Rise of the Intrapreneur,” Fast Company (May 15, 2015)
- Sonia Ospina et al, “Negotiating Accountability: Managerial Lessons from Identity-Based Nonprofit Organizations,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 31, no. 1 (March 2002)
- “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” UTNE Reader (March-April 2009)
- David Karpf, “Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group's Perspective: Looking Beyond Clicktivism,” Policy & Internet 2, no. 4 (December 2010)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Activate International Mechanisms”
- “The NGO-ization of Resistance”
11. Danger
-
- E.g., The Trial of Joan of Arc, directed by Robert Bresson (1962)
- How to Survive a Plague, directed by David France (2012)
- Doug McAdam, “The Biographical Consequences of Activism,” American Sociological Review 54, no. 5 (October 1989)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Civil Disobedience”
- “Subversive Travel”
Final project rough drafts due on March 13, peer reviews due March 16
12. Memory
- Barbara Lewis, “The Circle of Confusion: A Conversation with Anna Deavere Smith,” The Kenyon Review 15, no. 4 (autumn 1993)
- Wu Hung, “Tiananmen Square: A Political History of Monuments,” Representations no. 35 (summer 1991)
- The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, directed by Göran Olsson (2011)
Beautiful Rising:
- “Change Is the Only Constant”
- “Would You Like Some Structure with Your Momentum?”
13. Apocalypse
- Andy Beckett, “Accelerationism: How a Fringe Philosophy Predicted the Future We Live In,” The Guardian (May 11, 2017)
- Nathan Schneider, “Are You Ready for the Counter-Apocalypse?,” America (January 26, 2016)
- Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Day Before the Revolution” (1974)
Final projects due
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 ]