CLASS SCHEDULE
PART I - TALES AND MYTHS OF THE INTERNET
Week 1.Introduction and course overview: What is digital media and what's new about it?
Course overview
Introduction: What is web 2.0
Reading
Tim O'ReillyWhat is web 2.0,blog post.
Watching:
“The machine is US/ing US” (2007)
Week 2. Histories of computer culture
History of the Internet I
History of the Internet II
Reading:
Excerpts from: Curran, James, “The internet of history: rethinking the internet's past”, inMisunderstanding the Internet,eds. James Curran, Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman, London and New York: Routledge, 2016.
Excerpts from:Levine, Yasha.Surveillance Valley : The Secret Military History of the Internet, Icon Books Ltd, 2019.
Watching: selected clips from “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World” (2016); Esalen videos, etc.
Recommended readings:
Barlow, John Perry, A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, 1996.
Packer, George, “Change the world”,The New Yorker, May 27, 2013.
Week 3. Ideologies of computer culture
Class discussion: Histories of the Internet
The Californian Ideology as the Internet's founding myth
“Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World” (2016)
Reading:
Barbrook, Richard, and Cameron, Andy, (1995) “The Californian Ideology”,Mute Magazine.
Excerpts from:Fuchs, C. (2014).Social media : a critical introduction. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Week 4: Technodeterminism, cyberutopias, and the myth of the Internet as a public sphere
Class discussion: Ideologies of computer culture
'Early' theoretical readings of the Internet
Case study: hacker culture, disruption or freedom of speech?
Reading:
Excerpts from: Lindgren, S. ‘Digital Media and Society’, London: Sage, 2017.
Coleman, G. (2013) ‘Anonymous and the Politics of Leaking’, in Brevini, B., Hintz, A., and McCurdy, P. (eds.)Beyond WikiLeaks, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; pp. 209-228.
Watching: Mac’s 1984 commercial; ‘Dans la tete de Aziza’ Tunisian remix,“Revolution OS” (2001), “Mr Robot” (2015)
Recommended readings:
Coleman, E. Gabriella,Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
"Hacker", inRyan, M., Emerson, L., & Robertson, B. (Eds.). (2014).The johns hopkins guide to digital media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Week 5.Free software, open source, and remix cultures
Class discussion on technodeterminism, cyber utopias, etc.
Content creation in the digital era
Reading:
Excerpts from: Lessig, LawrenceRemix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy,(London: Bloomsbury, 2008).
"Free and Open Software", inRyan, M., Emerson, L., & Robertson, B. (Eds.). (2014).The johns hopkins guide to digital media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Stallman, Richard,'Why software should not have owners' 1994
Watching:selected clips from “Good copy bad copy” (2007), “RIP!A Remix Manifesto” (2008), “Re-examining the Remix: Larry Lessig's TEDTalk” (2010); ‘This is America’’s user-generated remixes (2018)
Week 6. Participatory culture and DIY communities
Class discussion on content creation
Convergence and participatory culture
Readings:
Excerpts from:
Jenkins, HenryConvergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide,(London and New York: New York University Press, 2006).
Davidson, Patrick. "The language of Internet memes", inMandiberg, M. (Ed.). (2014).The social media reader.
"Mash-up", "Participatory culture", inRyan, M., Emerson, L., & Robertson, B. (Eds.). (2014).The johns hopkins guide to digital media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Watching: user-generated remixes, mash-ups, memes case studies.
Week 7. Recap and midterm test
* midterm review of online projects
Review class
Midterm
PART II-METAPHORS AND LANGUAGES OF DIGITAL MEDIA
Week 8. Memes in digital culture
Introduction: languages and aesthetics of the Internet
Memes in digital culture
'The Cleaners'
Reading:
Excerpts from Shifman, L. (2014).Memes in digital culture.MIT Press.
Week 9: Virality, Aesthetics, Politics of online videos
Class discussion on memes
Deconstructing online videos
Reading:
Excerpts from Shifman, L. (2014).Memes in digital culture.MIT Press
Excerpts from 'The Video Vortex Reader' (2008)
Watching: Deepfakes, Cheapfakes, Lonely Girl, etc.
Week 10.Automation and Algorithmic cultures part I
Class discussion on online videos
The politics of automation part II
Reading:
Excerpts from: Miller, V.Understanding Digital Culture, London: Sage, 2011.
Watching: “How algorithms shape our world” (TedTalk 2011), Workers Living the GooglePlex, The Selfish Ledger, etc.
Week 11. Automation and Algorithmic cultures part II
Class discussion on automation
Algorithms, A.I.s& techno-surveillance
Reading:
Excerpts from: Miller, V.Understanding Digital Culture, London: Sage, 2011.
Watching: Preempting Dissent (2014),“Facebookistan” (2016), 'Losing Lena' (2019)
Week 12. Sharing economies or free labor?
Selected readings from:
Shirky, Clay, “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus”, in The Social Media Reader, ed. Michael Mandiberg, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 236-241.
Benkler, Yochai, "Sharing nicely", in Mandiberg, M. (Ed.). (2014). The social media reader.
Terranova, Tiziana, “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy”, in Social Text 2, 18 (2000 Summer): 33-58.
Watching: “How cognitive surplus will change the world: Clay Shirky's TED Talk” (2010), “Smart mobs: the next social revolution” (2002); “Facebookistan” (2016).
Recommended reading:
Ippolita, In the Facebook Acquarium: the Resistable Rise of Anarcho-Capitalism, Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam: 2015).
Week 13. Surveillance, fake news, algorithmic (in)justice and other digital discontents
Selected readings from:
Excerpts from:
van Dijck, J. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance and Society 12(2).
Chun, W. (2011) Programmed Visions; Software and Memory. Cambridge, Massachussets: The MIT Press.
Recommended readings
Cheney-Lippold, J. (2017) , We Are Data. Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves, New York: New York University Press.
Cohen, J. E. (2016) The Surveillance-Innovation Complex: The Irony of the Participatory Turn, in Barney, D. et al. (eds)The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age, Minneapolis – London: University of Minnesota Press
Watching: 'The Cleaners' (2018), Preempting Dissent (2014)
Week 14. Wrap up/online project presentations
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