Department of Anthropology

 

Office Hours: Wed 1-3 or by appointment (10 Marist)

This is a research seminar on recent Internet developments that feature user-generated content and increased interactivity – including social networks, amateur videography and commentary, also Open Source Software and “community informatics” movements – that aim to create or express social life on-line. Examples such as (but not limited to) Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, blogs, Google, Linux and other F/LOSS as well as renewed interest in “virtual” worlds, are widely hyped as “Web 2.0” that is supposed more participatory, more social or social in new ways or in new realms on-line. Hacking social life on-line is back. 

 

Strong versions of these ideas move beyond endism (death of distance, of community, of privacy, of intellectual property) to new modes of production and consumption of media, information, knowledge (me-media from social networking sites to RSS feeds, blogging, Wikipedia, Googling), shifts in the concept of the social to media on the Net, relocating where and how it is to be recognized. This is the stuff of debate and speculation, which we will put to the test in two ways. 

 

First, we will review some social science research findings and thinking on exchange and value under conditions of globalization and mediatization, particularly networks and the social organization of media environments. Second, we will engage “social software” through hands-on projects, which some may want to create or already are creating. Most people’s interests will fall between or combine analysis and production in research projects that identify research concepts and findings which can be applied to a Web 2.0 topic, issue, software implementation or social form that interests them. 

 

Our subject is hacking social life on-line and how it is done today: technologically, as media, and sociologically. Our focus will be on how these work together to make on-line practices more social and/or social in new ways.

 

 

 

The overall goal of this seminar is to train the next generation of info-analysts, to assist you to become more informed consumers of current ideas about the information economy/society/culture and better equipped to produce it through appropriate research practice. You will learn to evaluate arguments, issues, propositions in terms other than how they are stated by marshalling research, identifying theories, comparing evidence and presenting findings.

 

 

 

 

We will proceed stepwise – first, identifying topics, then relevant research-based literature, formulating our problems and, finally, producing reports that can be a normal research paper or a demonstration project with results (not just prospective ideas). This translates into three graded events or products:

The final 20% of your grade is for participation, which includes having read assignments and coming to class ready to discuss them, making presentations and responding to others’, and – for those who want – creating, moderating, contributing to on-line discussion forums on a Blackboard for this course. Part of this “participation” will include composing and posting notes on articles on course readings …

 

 

Readings.

 

A Blackboard for this course (MDIA 499-01under Anthropology) contains an initial selection of readings on Web 2.0 topics that are a mix of research articles and think pieces by social scientists and media researchers to get us started. Others will be added during the seminar, and participants are encouraged to open discussion forums on readings, topics and issues in it. 

 

Two books, available at the bookstore, are required reading:
 

 

Recommended (but not required, so not in the bookstore, but in the library):

 

 

 

 

Sep 02           First meeting. Introductions. Preliminary listing of topics

 

Sep 09           What is meant by Hacking Social Life On-Line? From ‘virtual communities’ to ‘social networks’

 

 

September     Literature Reviews – We will proceed to articles on social networking, exchange, values and mediatization on the Blackboard.

 

October          Problem Statements – Here is where you need Booth & Colomb for preparing problematizations of your topics, organizing relevant literature, identifying possible data.

 

November      Project Presentations – These will be next-to-final presentations outlining your projects and findings. Viva voce for similar feedback.

 

Dec 9              Last Class meeting

 

Dec 16           Final papers/presentations due (in lieu of a final)

 

 

Academic honesty is expected of all CUA students. Faculty are required to initiate the imposition of sanctions when they find violations of academic honesty, such as plagiarism, improper use of a student’s own work, cheating, and fabrication. 

The following sanctions are presented in the University procedures related to Student Academic Dishonesty (from https://mail.cua.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://policies.cua.edu/academicundergrad/integrityprocedures.cfm): “The presumed sanction for undergraduate students for academic dishonesty will be failure for the course. There may be circumstances, however, where, perhaps because of an undergraduate student’s past record, a more serious sanction, such as suspension or expulsion, would be appropriate. In the context of graduate studies, the expectations for academic honesty are greater, and therefore the presumed sanction for dishonesty is likely to be more severe, e.g., expulsion. ...In the more unusual case, mitigating circumstances may exist that would warrant a lesser sanction than the presumed sanction.”

 

Please review the complete texts of the University policy and procedures regarding Student Academic Dishonesty, including requirements for appeals, at http://policies.cua.edu/academicundergrad/integrity.cfm and http://policies.cua.edu/academicundergrad/integrity.cfm.

 

 

Assignments are due on the dates and in the formats indicated, either on paper at the beginning of class or as email attachments (DOC, RTF, or PDF only, please) before class. These are assists for discussion, for your orientation, and not notes after discussion or other afterthoughts. Late assignments, without University-recognised excuse, will be graded down one-half letter grade for the first day, one letter grade thereafter.

 

 

The Anthropology Department has an established policy regarding behavior in class. Barring emergency, students will remain seated during class, not getting up to walk out and return. Bathrooms are available for use before and after class. The use of cell phones or other electronic devices such as iPods, Playstations, Palm Pilots, Blackberries or Trios is prohibited during class. Kindly turn these off. NB: Since this is a seminar, we will have a half-time break.