Syllabus

Course Objectives

To develop the theoretical and methodological skills necessary for producing rigorous research on new and emerging media.
To become familiar with the new media research tools and to develop a critical approach to the use and misuse of these technologies.
To develop hands on experience and understanding of the current cultural changes in media production and consumption.
To adopt ‘power-user’ skills.
To be able to critique the present and somewhat predict the future on new media.

Course Format

The central focus of this course will be a set of field trips into new media environments and the creation of travel logs. Students will be required to work in small groups as well as individually. Each topic is pursued over a three-week period. Upon completion of one topic a new topic is selected and the cycle repeats itself. The traveler’s logs will be published in the form of a collaborative blog. The blog will serve both as a research tool and as a way to document the process and results of the field trips.

Classroom time consists of student groups presenting their research findings for the week, followed by criticism and feedback from the instructors and other students. Since the weekly course requirements are relatively demanding, the course does not have any additional exams or papers. Over the course of the semester a collection of travel logs will accumulate based on the student work. These will remain online as public documents, accessible both to other students as well as the general public.

Another focus of this course will be the toolbox – a growing collection of new media tools we will examine, use and critique in a format of a lab. Students will choose their tools based on this critical examination and will introduce new tools to the class to expand and advance our toolbox.

Course Requirements

All students are required to attend class and complete all assigned reading

New media travel logs:

Four different travels into new media lands are required. Each constructed of several blog posts. Two travel logs will be drafted collaboratively in small student groups; the other two will be solo. Each log must include a set of blog posts aggregating information from multiple online sources and a critical conclusion. The posts may include textual, sonic, or visual material or reference other material on the web. Each post must be published as a blog post, and therefore will be subject to public viewing and possible response.

Critique Format:

For each assignment the class will be divided to two groups. The first group will have to post its log by Sunday night and the second group will have to read all the posts through Monday and Tuesday morning, comment on one or more of them and present one of them in class. The following week, the groups roles will switch.

The New Media Embed Program

Towards the end of the semester we will work collaboratively on assembling a set of rules that will define guidelines for research into New Media environments.

Grade Formula

New Media Traveler’s Log #1: 10%
New Media Traveler’s Log #2: 20%
New Media Traveler’s Log #3: 30%
New Media Embed Program: 10%
Class participation and reading discussion lead: 30%

Required Books

The readings in the class will be assigned by the students themselves while a recommended reading list will be provided for every class.

Schedule

Our schedule will be flexible and is bound to change based on the class’s activity. The following id a framework we will refer to but by no means is this the exact class schedule.

Jan 22nd: Class 1 – Course Introduction

Content: A Guided Tour To The Bad streets of the Web
Toolbox: Wordpress, Social bookmarking service, rss aggregator
Context: screening of Adam Curtis’ The Trap: Whatever Happened to our Dream of Freedom (part 1 of 3)

Assignment: Travel Log-I: The Trap.

Jan 29th: Class 2 – Numerical Culture, How did we get here?

Critique: Traveler’s Log - I - group 1
Case study: The Secret Lives of Numbers
Content: How does the internet work?
Case study: E-mail
Toolbox: introduction to ShiftSpace / Trails

Feb 5th: Class 3 – The Public Sphere and The Blogosphere

Suggested reading:
Anna Notaro, “The Lo(n)g Revolution: The Blogosphere as an Alternative Public Sphere?”

Critique: Traveler’s Log - I - group 2
Toolbox: Blogger, Wordpress, webhosting, Technorati

Experiment: A week without Google

Assignment: Travel Log-II.

Feb 12th: Class 4 – Identity as Property and Panopticon 2.0

Suggested reading:
Alexandro Ludovico, “Interview with Christophe Bruno”, Neural Magazine
Cory Doctorow “Scroogled”
Tom Owad “Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists”

Critique: A Week without Google
Case study: Google Search, Gmail, Google Adsense, Google Adwords Happening

Assignment: Traveler’s log-II

Feb 19th: Class 5 – Social Software, Publics and Communities

Suggested reading:
Clay Shirky, “A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy”
Danah Boyd, “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”

Critique: Traveler’s Log - II - group 1
Case study: del.icio.us, MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter
Toolbox: Open CMS Drupal, Joomla, Plone, Upgrade International

Feb 26th: Class 6 – Our Media?

Suggested reading:
Jenkins, Henry “Taking the You Out of YouTube?”

“Steal This film 2”

Critique: Traveler’s Log - II - group 2
Case study:YouTube, Blip, Internet Archive, OurMedia, Bittorrent, The Pirate Bay
Toolbox: Where and how should we be hosting our videos online? How does podcasting work?

Assignment: Traveler’s log-III

March 4th: Class 7 – Free Culture (and a free class)

Suggested reading:
Lawrence Lessig’s “Free Culture” afterword (pp 273-306)

Required viewing:
Lawrence Lessig’s “Free Culture” presentation.

Toolbox: Creative Commons
Critique: Traveler’s Log - III

March 11th: Class 8 – Commons Based Peer Production

Suggested reading:

Yochai Benkler & Helen Nissenbaum, Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue*

Critique: Traveler’s Log - III
Toolbox: Open Source, Version Control, Linux

March 25th: Class 9 – The cult of Wikipedia

Suggested reading:

Jaron Lanier - Digital Maoism + responses to Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism

Critique: Traveler’s Log - III
Toolbox: Wikipedia, Wikiality, MediaWiki

Assignment: Traveler’s log-III

April 1st: Class 10 – Interface as a conflict of Ideologies

Suggested Reading:
Mushon Zer-Aviv, “Interface as a Conflict of Ideologies”

Toolbox: Firefox, Greasemonkey, ShiftSpace

Critique: Traveler’s Log - III

April 8th: Class 11 – Network Theory

Suggested Reading:
Alex Galloway & Eugene Thacker’s Introduction to “The Exploit: A Theory of Networks”: “We’re Tired of Trees”

Critique: Traveler’s Log - III
Toolbox: Napster, Bittorrent, Azureus, Tor

April 15th: Class 12 - Tactical Media vs. Strategic Media and the case of Parasitic Media

Suggested Reading:
De Certeau, Michel “The Practice of Everyday Life”

Required Reading:
Wark, Mackenzie “Strategies for Tactical Media”

Required Viewing:
The Yes Men, The Dow/Bhopal Case

Optional Viewing:
The Yes Men: The Movie

Critique: Traveler’s Log - III

Assignment: Guidelines for the New Media Embed Program

April 22nd: Class 13 – The Internet of Thing

Suggested Reading:

Dan Hill, The City As A Platform

Required Reading:

Brian Holmes - Drifting Through the Grid: Psychogeography and Imperial Infrastructure

Required Viewing:

Bruce Sterling’s presentation in the Innovation Forum.
Case study: Smart phones, RFID, GPS, Metrocard

Critique: The New Media Embed Program

April 29th: Class 14 – The Digital Divide and the Postnational Web

Required Listening/Reading:

Nicolas Negroponte, “Participation Revolution: OLPC” presentation at PopRech 2005:

Frost, Catherine “Internet Galaxy Meets Postnational Constellation: Prospects for Political Solidarity After the Internet” (a pdf will be emailed to you, please do not share.)

Critique: The New Media Embed Program / final conclusions
Case study: Savetheinternet.com, OLPC, Global Voices Online, Toot

Grading Rubric

A — Excellent. Student exhibits exemplary creativity through research and critical analysis. Research and writing is lucid and engaging with zero mistakes.

B — Good. References to the course material are well-selected and topical. Critical analysis is present, but largely rehearsed from class lecture and discussion. Student’s style is clear and has very few mistakes.

C — Satisfactory. References to the course material are well-selected and topical, but student performs little or no historical or critical analysis. Problems exist in student’s work. Work consists mostly of underdeveloped ideas, off-topic sources or examples, inappropriate research, or anecdotes.

D — Unsatisfactory. Student does not engage with the material and no historical or critical analysis is present. Substantial problems exist in student’s work.

F — Fail. Student does not submit work, or work is below unsatisfactory level.