Social Impact of Digita Media – Schedule OL 1:



Communication 120/220

Digital Media in Society

Fall Quarter, 2012

Lectures: Tu/Th 9:00-10:15, Room 300-300

Sections TBA

Professor Fred Turner

TA’s: Ben Allen, Mathias Crawford, Andreas Katsanevas

Office: 436 McClatchy Hall

Office Hours: TBA

E-mail: fturner@stanford.edu

Course Goals:

The last fifty years have brought us an astonishing array of digital technologies and with them, a bewildering variety of new media forms. Online social networking, multi-player online games, blogs, Wikis, micro-movies for cell phones – together, many argue, these and other new media genres are reshaping our understandings of how we live and work and of what it means to be human.

In this class we will explore these claims as we survey contemporary theories of the impact of digital media on the individual, the economy and the state. Do digital media fundamentally alter the nature of the human self, as many have claimed? How do they alter the landscape? Our notions of what it means to be “at home”? The ways we do business? The ways we govern ourselves?

To answer these questions, we’ll explore the dynamics of digital media and at the same time, the ways those dynamics shape – and have been shaped by – ongoing processes of social change. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between technological developments and two other large-scale historical changes: the rise of the post-industrial economy and of postmodern culture. By the end of the course, you should have a sense of how these large scale social and cultural shifts have shaped our uses of digital media and vice versa. You should be able to critique and synthesize the ways others have characterized the social impact of digital media. And most important of all, you should have begun to build your own theories of how digital media and social life interact.

Readings:

Required readings are available at the bookstore and on line.

You should buy the following books:

Goldsmith, Jack L., and Tim Wu. Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006

Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin Press, 2008

Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor. Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Morozov, Evgeny. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. 1st ed. New York: Public Affairs, 2011.

Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Ullman, Ellen. Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents. Picador, Reprint Edition, 2012

Articles and selections from other books will be available as PDFs on Coursework.

Recommended readings are just that: recommended. I’ve listed them here as a way for you to dig deeper into topics that interest you.

Assignments:

Please note that the assignments for Communication 120 (Undergraduate students) and Communication 220 (Graduate students) are somewhat different.

Communication 120 (Undergraduates):

Response Papers:

You will be asked to write two “response” papers of 2-2 ½ double-spaced pages (700-750 words). In these papers, you will draw on the course readings and discussions to craft a brief, focused argument in response to an assigned statement. For instance, you might be asked to respond to the statement: “Cyberspace is an open stage for identity play.” You could then agree with the statement, disagree with it, or take a position in the middle. Your position would need to be well-supported and would need to take account of opposing points of view. What will determine your grade will not be the position you take so much as the sophistication and rigor with which you support it.

First Response Paper First Draft Due: At the start of class October 16.

First Response Paper Final Draft Due: At the start of class October 30.

Second Response Paper First Draft (optional) Due: to your TA by November 6.

Second Response Paper Final Draft Due: At the start of class, November 13.

Final Paper:

You will be asked to choose among several possible topics and write an essay of approximately 8-10 double-spaced pages (2400-3000 words). The questions will ask you to synthesize course readings and link them to issues and/or artifacts we have discussed in class.

Due Date: 12 Noon Monday December 10, with stamped, self-addressed mailing envelope for return, Prof. Turner’s office, 436 McClatchy Hall.

Expectations:

Participation:

While formally a lecture course, our class meetings will in fact be quite interactive. You’ll need to come to both lecture and section with the reading done and with the ability to participate in a class discussion.

To participate effectively, you should aim to speak in a way that moves a discussion forward and increases the learning for the whole group. Contributions can include questions, insights, and responses to other comments. They can also include provocative mistakes. Being “wrong” but intellectually adventurous can often help jump-start everyone’s thinking. One powerful comment or question is worth more than many less powerful remarks.

Writing:

Your writing needs to come in on time and should represent your best work at every level. Papers that come in late or with errors of fact, grammar or spelling will be penalized. As ever, the Honor Code applies to all your work.

Grades:

Participation = 10%

First Draft of First Response Paper = 10%

Final Draft of First Response Paper = 10%

Second Response Paper (only final draft graded) = 30%

Final Paper = 40%

Communication 220 (Graduate Students):

Assignments:

Response Papers:

You will be asked to write two “response” papers of 5-8 double-spaced pages (1500-2400 words). In these papers, you will draw on the course readings (including the recommended readings), class discussions, and where appropriate, your knowledge of digital media, to craft a focused argument in response to an assigned statement. For instance, you might be asked to respond to the statement: “Cyberspace is an open stage for identity play.” You could then agree with the statement, disagree with it, or take a position in the middle. Your position would need to be well-supported and would need to take account of opposing points of view. What will determine your grade will not be the position you take so much as the sophistication and rigor with which you support it.

First Response Paper due: At the start of class, October 30.

Second Response Paper due: At the start of class, November 13.

Final Paper:

You will be asked to choose among several possible topics and write an essay of approximately 8-10 double-spaced pages (2400-3000 words). The questions will ask you to synthesize course readings and link them to issues and/or artifacts we have discussed in class.

Due Date: By 12 noon Monday December 10, PDF by email, to fturner@stanford.edu.

Discussion Sections: n/a. Come to office hours with Professor Turner.

Communication 220 Grading:

Participation = 10%

Response Paper 1 = 20%

Response Paper 2 = 30%

Final Paper = 40%

Course Schedule:

(subject to change.)

Part 1: What Are Digital Media and How Do They Matter?:

Week 1: Tuesday, September 25: Introductions

No Readings

Thursday, September 27: What ARE digital media?

Required readings:

• Lev Manovich, “Principles of New Media,” from Manovich, The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. 27-48.

• Mirko Tobias Schäfer, “Enabling/Repressing Participation,” from Schäfer, Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 55-76

Recommended Readings:

• Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: Ecco, 2012.

• J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999, esp. ch. 3 “Networks of Remediation.”

• Galloway, Alexander R. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004, esp. “Physical Media,” 28-53.

Week 2: Tuesday, October 2: The Rise of Postmodern, Networked Society

Required Reading:

• Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. “Introduction” and “Bureaucracy,” pp. 1-82.

Recommended Reading:

• Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford, England; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989, esp. Part 2.

• Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

• Bell, Daniel. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Thursday, October 4: The Early Internet and Web 1.0

Required Reading:

• Howard Rheingold. “A slice of my life in my virtual community.” High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace. Ed. Peter Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992/1996. 413-436. Available:

• humdog. “Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace.” High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace. Ed. Peter Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. 437-444. Available:

• John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Available: (and many other sites)

Recommended Reading:

• Turner, Fred. “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community.” Technology and Culture, Vol.46, No.3 (July, 2005), pp. 485-512.

• Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press, 2006.

• John Coate, “Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community” (1992-1998) on line at:

Part 2: Social Production, Social Consumption

Week 3: Tuesday, October 9: Commons-Based Peer Production

Required Reading:

Lessig, Remix, Ch.’s 6,7, and 8.

Recommended Reading:

• Richard Raymond, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” version 3.0. Available:

• Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

• Kelty, Christopher M. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, Experimental Futures. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

• Weber, Steve. The Success of Open Source. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

• Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.

• Kreiss, Daniel, Megan Finn, and Fred Turner. "The Limits of Peer Production: Some Reminders from Max Weber for the Network Society." New Media & Society 13, no. 2 (2011): 243-59.

Thursday, October 11: Online Labor

Required Readings:

• Turow, Joseph. The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 65-110

• Terranova, Tiziana. "Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy." Social Text 18, no. 2 (2000): 33-58. Available:

Recommended Readings:

• Andrejevic, Mark. Ispy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

Week 4: Tuesday, October 16: Peer Production and Mass Media

DUE: FIRST DRAFT OF FIRST RESPONSE PAPER

Required Readings:

• Who Owns the Media: Ownership Chart The Big six”

• Jenkins, Henry. “Quentin Tarentino’s Star Wars?” Chapter 4 of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

• Andrejevic, Mark "Watching Television Without Pity: Online Viewer Labor." Television and New Media. Vol. 9, No. 1, 24-46 (2008) Available

Recommended Readings:

• Andrejevic, Mark. "The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self-Disclosure." Critical Studies in Media Communication, June (2002): 230-48.

• Muniz, Albert M., Jr., and Thomas C. O'Guinn. “Brand community.” Journal of Consumer Research 27, March (2001): 412-432.

Thursday, October 18: Crowdsourcing and Piecework

Required Readings:

• Howe, Jeff. “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” Wired 14.06 (June, 2006):

• Ross, Irani, et al. “Who are the Crowdworkers?: Shifting Dynamics in Mechanical Turk.” CHI EA '10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. Available:

Recommended Readings:

• Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin Press.

• Howe, Jeff. Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009.

Part 3: Digital Citizenship: Expression and Regulation

Week 5: Tuesday, October 23: Gaming Work and the Role of Affect

In-class Interview with Byron Reeves, co-author of Total Engagement: Using Games to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete

Required Reading:

• Chapter 1 of Reeves and Read, Total Engagement: Using Games to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete (Harvard Business Press, 2009). Available on Coursework site.

Recommended Reading:

• Castronova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

• Dibbell, Julian. "Owned!" In The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds, edited by Jack M. Balkin and Beth Simone Noveck, 137-45. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

Thursday, October 25: The Community as the Factory

Required Readings:

• Turner, Fred. "Burning Man at Google: A Cultural Infrastructure for New Media Production." New Media & Society, Vol.11, No.1-2 (April, 2009), 145-66. Available: (look under “Essays”)

Recommended Readings:

• Kreiss, Daniel, Megan Finn, and Fred Turner. "The Limits of Peer Production: Some Reminders from Max Weber for the Network Society." New Media & Society 13, no. 2 (2011): 243-59.

Week 6: Tuesday, October 30: Remix Culture and Copyright Law

DUE: FINAL DRAFT OF FIRST RESPONSE PAPER

Required Readings:

• Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. Chapters 1 through 5.

• Cord Jefferson, “The Music Industry’s Funny Money,” The Root, July 6, 2010:

Recommended Readings:

• Richard Stallman’s GNU Public License, online at:

• Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. New York, N.Y.: Random House, 2001.

Thursday, November 1: Code as Law

Required Readings:

• Lawrence Lessig, Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999: Ch. 6 “Cyberspaces” & Ch. 7 “What Things Regulate,” (pp. 63-99).

• John Perry Barlow, “The economy of ideas: a framework for rethinking patents and copyrights in the digital age (everything you know about intellectual copyright is wrong).” Wired 2.03 March, 1994: 84-90, 126-129. Online at:

Recommended Readings:

• Gillespie, Tarleton. Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007.

• Introna, Lucas D., and Helen Nissenbaum. “Shaping the web: why the politics of search engines matters.” The Information Society 16.3 (2000): 169-186 (available online via library)

Week 7: Tuesday, November 6: Who Controls The Internet?

LAST DAY TO SUBMIT OPTIONAL DRAFT OF SECOND RESPONSE PAPER TO TA.

Required Readings:

• Goldsmith, Jack L., and Tim Wu. Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 1-104

Recommended Readings:

• Zittrain, Jonathan. The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Thursday, November 8: Does the Internet Undermine State Control?

Required Readings:

• Morozov, Evgeny. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. 1st ed. New York: Public Affairs, 2011: ch’s 1,2, 6, 10, 11

Recommended Readings:

• Howard, Philip N. The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam, Oxford Studies in Digital Politics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

• Kreiss, Daniel. Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama, Oxford Studies in Digital Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

• MacKinnon, Rebecca. "Consent of the Networked the Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom." New York: Basic Books, 2012.

Part 4: Digital Media and the Life Cycle

Week 8: Tuesday, November 13: Networked Individualism

DUE: FINAL DRAFT OF SECOND RESPONSE PAPER

Required Reading:

• Rainie, Harrison, and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 3-57.

• Stephen Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?,” The Atlantic, May, 2012:

• Eric Klinenberg, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? No, The Atlantic Cover Story is Wrong,” :

Recommended Reading:

• Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

• Granovetter, Mark S. "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973): 1360-80.

• Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Pub., 2002.

Thursday, November 15: A Networked Youth

Required Reading:

• Mizuko Ito, “Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and the Re-Placement of Social Contact,” forthcoming, in Rich Ling and Per Pedersen, ed. Mobile Communications: Re-negotiation of the Social Sphere. Available via coursework.

• danah boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Available: and via coursework.

Recommended Reading:

• Ito et al., Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (MacArthur Foundation White Paper), 2008. Available:

• Manuel Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, Cambridge: MIT Press: 2007.

NOTE: November 19-23 Thanksgiving Break

Week 9: Tuesday, November 27: Digital Industries and the Life Cycle

Required Readings:

• Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents. New York: Picador, 2012

Recommended Readings:

• Neff, Gina. Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

• Andrew Ross, No-collar: the humane workplace and its hidden costs. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2003.

• Florida, Richard L. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2002.

• Saxenian, AnnaLee. The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.

• Saxenian, AnnaLee. Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.

• English-Lueck, J. A. Cultures@Silicon Valley. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Thursday, November 29:

Required Readings:

• Eva Illouz, “Romantic Webs,” from Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007; pp.74-107, 126-129.

Recommended Readings:

• Nakamura, Lisa, and Peter Chow-White. Race after the Internet. New York: Routledge, 2011.

• Lisa Nakamura, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet, New York: Routledge, 2002.

• Jonathan Sterne, The Computer Race Goes to Class” in Nakamura, et al. Race in Cyberspace, 191-212.

• Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and The Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” Feminism and Foucault. Eds. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988. 61-86.

Week 10: Tuesday, December 4: Digital Memory and the End of the Private Self

Required Reading:

• Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor. Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, ch’s 1,3,4 and 6.

Recommended Reading:

• Bell, C. Gordon, and Jim Gemmell. Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. New York, N.Y.: Dutton, 2009.

Part 5: The Future?

Thursday, December 6:

Required Reading:

• Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, Ch. 4 “Social Capitalism in Our Time”

• Lessig, Remix, pp. 224-298

Recommended Reading:

• Blascovich, Jim, and Jeremy Bailenson. Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. 1st ed. New York: William Morrow, 2012.

• Rheingold, Howard. Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

• John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, RAND, 2001: Ch.1, “The Advent of Netwar (Revisited)”

FINAL PAPER DUE 12 NOON, MONDAY DECEMBER 10, 436 McCLATCHY HALL

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