About the Course Schedule
Assignments and readings are due on the day they are listed. For example, Jenkins should be read for Thursday, 1/18. This schedule is subject to change.
week 1: Beginnings / Course Themes
T 1/16: Brief Introductions; Larry Lessig on Laws that Choke Creativity; student mashups, zines
Assignment for Thursday, 1/18
Click through the course web site, getting familiar with the layout and read the Syllabus carefully. Come to class with any questions you might have.If you do not yet have a Twitter account, please sign up for one at http://twitter.com. Twitter works best (especially for our purposes) when the username is professional and you are authentic. For example, my username is: billwolffsju (http://twitter.com/billwolffsju), and I use my full name to show who I am. My account is unlocked. Please sign up with a professional username and keep your account unlocked. We’ll be using Twitter in a professional way so there is no need to keep anything private. Make sure you have your username with you. The shorter the username the better and please avoid underscores (_); they are hard to type on smartphones.
Please read Jenkins, Ito, and boyd (2016) pages 1-21 (oops, not 18), which is from Participatory Culture in a Networked Era and consists of conversations among the three authors, Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd. Please annotate the text, noting key terms, definitions, and various interpretations of “participatory culture.” Take particular note of their discussion of forms of resistance. In class, we will start to come to an understanding of the many ways of understanding participatory culture. Be prepared to contribute meaningfully to the discussion.
H 1/18: Jenkins, Ito, and boyd (2016), pages 1 – 21; jenkins-ito-boyd-discussion-qs.pdf
Hand out Semester Topic, Proposal, and Twitter assignments
week 2: Participatory Culture, Copyright, & Zines
Assignment for Monday 1/22 and Tuesday 1/23
Please Semester Topic assignment and complete the Proposal assignment by 5:00pm on Monday, 1/22. Email your proposal to Bill.Read through the Twitter assignment, follow everyone in the class, and begin live-tweeting your work by completing the following:
Please read Jenkins, Ito, and boyd (2016), pages 21 – end. In this portion of the text boyd plays a significantly greater role, both in terms of the amount of content and in shaping the direction of the conversation. Please tweet using the #smpcs18 hashtag at least one of her key passages and in a series of follow-up tweets, share your interpretation of her statement(s) and whether or not see you have seen similar events in the online spaces you use. Then look to your classmates tweets and reply to them, starting a conversation.
In class on Tuesday, we will continue our discussion of participatory culture and will set up our group blogs.
M 1/22: Topic proposal due in email to Bill by 5:00pm.
T 1/23: Jenkins, Ito, and boyd (2016), pages 21 – end; Learning Communities; pc-defs.pdf
Assignment for Thursday, 1/25
The readings for Thursday will get us started on zines. Please read Duncombe on zines, which is basically an overview and introduction to zines. Then, on the Readings and Texas page, you will see a list of zines under the heading Zine Examples for 1/25. Glance at each of the zines very quickly and then choose two or three to read in detail (one is 60 pages, which you . As you read, try to notice some of the characteristics of zines that Duncombe describes. Tweet some of those characteristics and also tweet some of your reactions to the zines that you read in detail. What are your initial thoughts? What surprised or shocked you? Be open and honest with your impressions. Our social media spaces should be treated in the same way our physical spaces are treated, as we discussed on Tuesday in class:
If, after reading some of these zines, you want to change your semester topic, please email me immediately with your new topic idea.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
H 1/25: Duncombe on zines; Zine Examples for 1/25; set up group blogs
week 3: Zines & Riot Grrrl
Assignment for Tuesday, 1/30
Please read Darms, Fateman, and Comstock along with the Riot Grrrl Examples (note: 70+ pages). You might try to keep the zine examples open as you read so you can move back and forth between examples and articles. Darms’ essay serves as the introduction to the important Riot Grrrl Collection book and Fateman’s is a short memoir-type piece about her experience with the riot grrrl movement that also appears at the front of the book. Comstock’s academic article considers grrrl zines as spaces with radically new representations of, among other things, authorship and feminism.Comstock writes, “Situating the grrrl author as a postfeminist author politicizes and historicizes her newly adopted stances, styles, technologies, and practices of writing. We may, therefore, look to this contemporary grrrl zine network for more than just new sites of authorship; we may also under stand these young and not so young women as rhetoricians engaged in the important political processes of re-envisioning and revising ‘feminism’ and ‘girlhood’ in the contemporary United States” (p. 384).
Thinking about Comstock’s statement, I’d like you to locate and tweet examples where you see similar kinds of things happening in the Riot Grrrl Examples I have provided. Take and tweet screen shots of the specific pages and parts of pages and discuss how what you are tweeting is an example of that re-envisioning, such as:
Try to tweet 3 – 5 examples and respond to the examples your classmates post, as well.
T 1/30: Darms; Fateman; Comstock on grrrl zines; Riot Grrrl examples; zine-discussion-statements.pdf
Hand out Zine-Making Assignment
Assignment for Thursday, 2/1
Please read Licona, pages 27 – 59. This is a long, dense read, so give yourself plenty of time to get through it. I have located at least 1 of the zines Licona mentions and have added them to the Zines for 2/1 section of the Readings page. Please look at them, as well as one additional zine, which also engages many of Licona’s ideas on borderlands rhetoric and code switching.While reading Licona, I’d like you to highlight or underline sentences or passages you are not sure you fully understand. Tweet three of those passages, asking your classmates how they understand it. Then engage your classmates in conversation about it. Each student must reply to at least 3 of these queries.
Please read through the Zine-Making Assignment and start thinking about the kind of contribution you’d like to make to the zine. Come to class with a 5-7-sentence manifesto that articulates your beliefs about your chosen topic.
H 2/1: Licona; examples; Storify about Borderlands and Zines
week 4: Zine Creation
Assignment for Tuesday, 2/6
Please read the zine I handed out in class on Thursday as some inspiration for thinking about what you might write and how pages can be designed. There is no other reading.However, please come to class with a clear idea of the rhetorical and visual goals of your portion of your group zine. It might help to start sketching out the pages you’ll be creating, listing the genres you want to use, and listing the texts you are planning on appropriating for your own purposes. Your group should also start thinking about when they can meet to talk about the overall goals for the zine.
On Tuesday, we have a workshop with Katie Haegele and Joe Carlough, who will be talking with us about the zine-making process. Please look through their web sites and learn a bit about them. Come with at least 2 questions about zine-making you’d like to ask.
Please work on your blog post, which is due Tuesday by 11:00pm. Do not want until the last minute to work on it.
T 2/6: Zine Workshop with Katie Haegele and Joe Carlough
Blog Post 1 Due by 11:00pm
H 2/8: University closed for Eagles Parade Creating the zine
week 5: Zine Creation
Assignment for Tuesday, 2/13
Please come to class with a detailed sketch of what you would like two of your zine pages to look like. Tweet a few pics of your sketch with the #spmcs18 and explain what you’re trying to do, as well.If there are materials you think you’d like to use and you have them at home, such as old magazines or books that you’ll be cutting out, bring those with you. I’d also like you to have a full draft of your required at least 500 words of original content with you. This can, in part, include the manifesto you wrote for last week but should also include additional material. The text does not have to be one full narrative. It can be a list, a series of blurbs, a grouping of 100-word bursts, etc.
In class, we will be working on creating the zines and you will have time to work with your groups to plan the collaborative portions. If you have your group member’s contact info, you might plan to meet outside of class prior to Tuesday to get started on that.
T 2/13: Creating the zine
H 2/15: Creating the zine Workshopping zines
Zine Drafts Due
week 6: Remix and Mashups
T 2/20: Workshopping zines Gaylor’s RIP: A Remix Manifesto; McIntosh
Zine Drafts Due
Assignment for Thursday, 2/22
The texts for Thursday are going to bring us into our next unit, which is about the how people have used video to challenge institutions and laws by remixing and mashing together popular culture artifacts.Please read McIntosh on the history of subversive remix videos and then watch RIP: A Remix Manifesto (note: 1 hour 27 minutes long):
Then read Vaidhyanathan on the history and scope of copyright. Please try your best to read and watch the work in this order: McIntosh, Gaylor, and then Vaidhyanathan. Note that it might take a few minutes for McIntosh’s article to load because there are so many videos embedded in it. I don’t recommend reading it on a phone. You do not need to watch every single video he discusses, but try to watch parts of at least Videos 1, 8, 12, 22, 23, and 30.
Once you have read the work, I’d like you to create a thread of 5 tweets in which you articulate your position on the copyright versus public good debate, which each of these texts explore. That is, do you believe that copyright as it currently exists is too restrictive? Have current laws lost sight of the original intentions of copyright law, which was to balance public needs with individual financial interests? Or, should GirlTalk be in jail? Be sure to reference and cite the texts, as needed. Remember, Twitter now accepts 280 characters, so your thread can be more involved.
In class on Thursday, we will begin to engage these ideas, which are important for all content creators.
H 2/22: McIntosh; Gaylor’s RIP: A Remix Manifesto; Vaidhyanathan on copyright; Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix; Kelly on Screen Literacy
Zine Final Drafts and Reflections Due
week 7: Remix and Mashup
Assignment for Tuesday, 2/27 (slightly updated)
Please watch Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix, and read Kelly on Screen Literacy; and Tryon, on political remixes. The articles are on the Readings page. Here is the movie, which is 37 minutes long.Please watch the movie first and then read the articles in the order listed above.
Update: Here are several videos mentioned in Tryon’s article that I could find. Please watch, as well: Vote Different; 3AM; Celeb; Britney and McCain in 2008; Obama Celeb and White Women; Paris Hilton Responds.
Once you have completed the texts, I’d like you to create a thread of 5 tweets in which you articulate your position on the nature of creativity, linking it to the subversive remix and copyright texts, as well as our discussion in class. Considering Ferguson’s and Kelly’s discussions, how are we to consider the originality of the parody and political remixes that Tryon discuss? Or, do you think Ferguson is being hyperbolic, not everything, really, is a remix? How does intertextuality enter into the conversation? If you think so, what things are wholly and individually original? Please also reply to your classmates’ tweets.
T 2/27: Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix; Kelly on Screen Literacy; Tryon; McCloud on comics; Hall on semiotics; “Imagine This”; creativity-intertextuality-mashup.pdf; Mrs. Doubtfire; The Shining
Assignment for Thursday, 3/1
The readings for this week are going to help us develop a vocabulary for understand and creating video mashups. Please read Hall (2012), which is a basic introduction to semiotics, and McCloud (1994) on the important role of the gutter in comics (feel free to skip over the graph stuff if you’d like). I’d then like you to watch the following mashup, “Imagine This”:After watching the video, I’d like you to create a 5-tweet thread in which you consider the role of INTERTEXTUALITY in understanding the MESSAGE (from Hall) in video, and the effect of NOISE (from Hall) in complicating our understanding that MESSAGE. Where does the GUTTER (from McCloud) fit into it all? And what is up with the parts with Animal? Use the #smpcs18 hashtag. Also, try to reply to several of your classmates tweet.
H 3/1: McCloud on comics; Hall on semiotics; “Imagine This”; Sample Student Mashups; Storyboarding and Downloading Video
Hand out Video Mashup Assignment
F 3/2: Come to the Annex with groups tow work on zines.
week 8: Mashups
Assignment for Tuesday, 3/6
Please read through the Video Mashup Assignment, including watching each of the sample student mashups.I’d like you to start thinking about your video mashup by coming to class with a 200-250 word summary of your possible video mashup. In your summary, please including the following info:
- what message you want to get across
- what kinds of video clips you’d like to include
- what emotions are associated with your topic
- what images are associated with those emotions (for example, if hopelessness is an emotion associated with your subject, what images would visually convey hopelessness)
- what soundtrack you’d like to use (can be any song as long as it is 3 – 5 minutes long)
Please also come with a basic storyboard visually representing the first 20 seconds of your mashup.
Remember, final zines are due in class on Tuesday. I’ll have the long-arm stapler so your group can staple them all.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
T 3/6: Work on mashup drafts; Storyboarding and Downloading Video
Zine Final Drafts and Reflections Due
Mashup Video Summary and Storyboard Due
Assignment for Thursday, 3/8
Please complete the first draft of your video mashup, which is to be 30 seconds long, and upload it to the course YouTube channel by the start of class. If you don’t recall the username and password, please email Bill.Remember, your second blog post is also due Thursday, by 11:00pm.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
H 3/8: Workshop mashup drafts
Video Mashup Rough Draft #1 due on YouTube channel by class time
Blog Post #2 Due Online by 11:00pm
Spring Break — 3/12 – 3/16
week 9: Mashup Conference Week
T 3/20: Class Canceled for Conferences
W 2/21: Mashup Video Draft #2 Due Online by noon
H 3/22: Class Canceled for Conferences
week 10: Participatory Culture Online: The Early Years
Assignment for Tuesday, 3/27
The readings for this week mark the beginning of our third unit, which is looking at how subversion and resistance have moved into an online environment, but also how governments, corporations, and institutions have been able to take advantage of how people are interacting online.The readings for this week and next week are presented as context for understanding our current social media, as these articles were published before the term “social media” and social media applications were ubiquitous.
For Tuesday, please read Shelly Turkle’s supremely important article from 1996, “Whom Am We?” and Kevin Kelly’s similarly important article from 2005, “We Are the Web,” both published in Wired Magazine. (Note: We read a 2008 article by Kevin Kelly already; please read the 2005 article. Also watch Mike Wesch’s 2008 “An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube” (55 minutes, but it goes very fast). All are linked from the Readings page.
Note that in 1996, less than half of US households owned a personal computer. The World Wide Web had only been invented in 1989, and the first widely distributed graphical browser (like we use today), Mosaic, was invented in 1993; email became popular in 1994. Google was created in 1998; in 2006 Facebook opened to the public. In other words, these articles are from the early days.
By Sunday evening, I’d like you to tweet a 5-tweet thread using the #smpcs18 hashtag in which you discuss overlaps in the messages contained in these three early texts. End your thread with a question posed to the class. Please respond to at least 5 of your classmates by the start of class on Tuesday.
T 3/27: Turkle (1996); Kelly (2005); Wesch (2008); turkle-kelly-wesch-questions.pdf
Assignment for Thursday, 3/29
Please read Rheingold (1993), Dibbell (1993), and Vaidhyanathan (2008). Like our readings for Tuesday, these texts are from the early days of the Internet — the first two predating Turkel’s “Who Am We” by 3 years. These are both seminal texts in the history of writing about virtual environments and communities.If we consider the articles we read for Tuesday, “Innocence,” these can be considered “Experience.” As such, I’d like you to create a 5-tweet thread in which you consider how the warnings that Rheingold ends his piece with, predicts the actions in Dibbell and the claims in Vaidhyanathan. I’d also like you to speculate how what was seen as glossy idealism in the articles we read for Tuesday, could be seen as foreboding something much more sinister.
Please be aware that Dibbell’s article is about rape in a virtual space and contains several graphic components.
H 3/29: Rheingold (1993); Dibbell (1993); Vaidhyanathan (2008)
F 3/30: Mashup Video Final Draft and Reflection Due by 11:00pm
week 11: Up to our Present Moment: Social Media
T 4/3: No Class — University is on a Monday Schedule
Mashup Video Final Draft and Reflection Due by 11:00pm
Assignment for Thursday, 4/5
Please read Rheingold (1993), Dibbell (1993), and Vaidhyanathan (2008). Like our readings for Tuesday, these texts are from the early days of the Internet — the first two predating Turkel’s “Who Am We” by 3 years. These are both seminal texts in the history of writing about virtual environments and communities.If we consider the articles we read for Tuesday, “Innocence,” these can be considered “Experience.” As such, I’d like you to create a 5-tweet thread in which you consider how the warnings that Rheingold ends his piece with, predicts the actions in Dibbell and the claims in Vaidhyanathan. I’d also like you to speculate how what was seen as glossy idealism in the articles we read for Tuesday, could be seen as foreboding something much more sinister.
Please be aware that Dibbell’s article is about rape in a virtual space and contains several graphic components.
H 4/5: Rheingold (1993); Dibbell (1993); Vaidhyanathan (2008); rheingold-dibbell-vaid.pdf
week 12: Disruption, Protest, and Algorithms
Assignment for Tuesday, 4/10
As we discussed in class, it is clear that many students are not doing the readings, which is completely unacceptable. If the readings are not completed and the associated small writing is not completed, I will be forced to use other assessment methods (long responses, quizzes, etc.), which I’m sure none of us what to use. So, please be sure to complete the readings.For this week, we move up to how social media spaces are being used to both enact power and signal power. Please read Ramsey (2015) on “Black Twitter” (which is an interview with Meredith Clark) and Tufekci (2017b) on Signaling Power, which is a portion of a chapter of the book Twitter and Tear Gar: The Power and Fragility in Networked Protest. (Note that this is the second of the two Zufekci readings.)
Please compose a 5-tweet thread in which you consider how Clark’s discussion of “Black Twitter” aligns (or doesn’t align) with Tufekci’s discussion of signaling power in social media spaces. OR, consider how the discussions build on or reinforce or challenge our readings of resistance in terms of mashup and zines. Please post early so the tweets can be used to inform class discussion.
T 4/10: Ramsey on Black Twitter; Tufekci on Signaling Power
Blog Post 3 Due by 11:00pm
Assignment for Thursday, 4/12
Please read Angwin & Grassegger (2017); Noble (2018); Tufekci (2017a) on Algorithms. These articles are about the algorithms created and used to determine the information we see when we use social media and gather social media online.There is no set prompt for the these readings, but please live-tweet some responses as you see fit.
We will discuss the articles in detail in class on Thursday.
Your third blog post is due by 11:00pm pm Thursday.
H 4/12: Angwin & Grassegger (2017); Noble (2018); Tufekci (2017a) on Algorithms
Blog Post 3 Due by 11:00pm
week 13: Bots and Fake News, 2016 – Present
Assignment for Tuesday, 4/17
Please read the articles and watch the videos under the Bots and Fake News Readings, Part 1. November 2016 – December 2017 heading on the Readings page.You are only required to read/watch the texts with an R: in front of them.I realize there are many texts, but most are rather short news-type articles. Pay particular attention to Nimmo, B. (2017, August 28), as it is the only reading that explains how bots work.
There is no set prompt for the these readings, but please live-tweet some responses as you see fit.
We will discuss the articles in detail in class on Tuesday.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
T 4/17: Bots and Fake News Readings, Part 1. November 2016 – December 2017; bot-or-not.pdf
Assignment for Thursday, 4/19
Please read the articles and watch the videos under the Bots and Fake News Readings, Part 2. January 2018 – April 11, 2018. heading on the Readings page.You are only required to read/watch the texts with an R: in front of them.I realize there are many texts, but most are rather short news-type articles.
There is no set prompt for the these readings, but please live-tweet some responses as you see fit.
We will discuss the articles in detail in class on Tuesday.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
H 4/19: Bots and Fake News Readings, Part 2. January 2018 – April 2018.
week 14: Network Visualization Analysis
Assignment for Tuesday, 4/24
On Tuesday we will begin our discussion of network visualizations. These visualizations will be significantly more complex than the one we created for Blog Post 3, but we’re not going to get too far into the woods on the visualization theory. Rather, we are going to learn the basics of how to make them and how to interpret them so you can get a feel for the possibilities such work affords. We will be using two free pieces of software—the Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset (DMI-TCAT), and Gephi, which creates network visualizations. I have installed DMI-TCAT on a server for us to use; Gephi is free to download. With these, we’ll be making some very cool network visualizations of our hashtags and will write about them. Please complete the following by Tuesday:
- If you were not in class on Thursday, please start archiving in DMI-TCAT using the links and passwords I emailed you. The longer the archive runs the better the results will be, so do this immediately.
- Download and install Gephi, which is the open source software we’ll be using to create network visualizations. DMI-TCAT exports data in formats that Gephi can read, which is why we are using it. It’s also fairly easy to just jump into.
- Read Wolff (2017) on Twitter archiving practices and ethics.
Please also watch these two videos. When watching, tweet questions and thoughts you have about network visualizations, as well as questions based on Wolff article. In class we’ll go over examples of networks so we can become proficient in the terminology used to discuss them. Please watch them in the order listed. The first video contains important network terminology and the second goes into further detail about networks. In the second video, Jen Golbeck gives a thoughtful and extended discussion of information visualization. I encourage you to watch it, but if you don’t want to, you can skip ahead to 10:07 and watch until the end. Please live-tweet your watching experiences. The video is from an online course she ran, so you’ll hear references to that throughout; ignore those.
T 4/24: Discuss Network Visualizations; network-mapping-handout.pdf
Assignment for Thursday, April 26
Go to your DMI-TCAT Analysis page and log in. Find your archive in the pulldown menu and update the page to show your archive’s stats. To get a better view, select Hours from the Graph Resolution option. You should see something that looks like this:
Scroll through the Analysis screen, looking at the many different ways you can export data—to Excel (as .csv files) and you Gephi. Try a few options to export and see what you can learn about your archive.
NOTE 1: Do not use Safari when accessing DMI-TCAT. It downloads a .txt file, which is not the correct file format. Use Chrome or Firefox instead.
Then, export the User stats (individual) for your complete archive and open it in Excel or Pages or OpenOffice. Scroll through your list of usernames and try to find some that could be bots based on what we have read about how to spot a bot based on usernames. For example, in the test archive I created, I found Greenbe69354009, which stood out to me because of all the numbers in the username. When I went to the account, it had 222 tweets since joining on April 16, 2018–total bot, in this case retweeting pro-liberal news. See what you can find and tweet some of your results. Also make sure you have the archive ready in class.
Then, watch the below tutorial, which takes you from DMI-TCAT to Gephi to create In-Degree and Out-Degree maps of mentions.
After watching the video, create and export two network maps from your hashtag archive: an In-Degree Network and an Out-Degree Network. The tutorial takes you through the process.
After creating your maps, tweet them and share a few things that are interesting to you about them. If you have any questions, let me know.
If you have trouble at first, don’t get frustrated. It took me many tries to get comfortable with it. Just re-watch the part of the tutorial that you need to and go from there. It is helpful to use a mouse when using Gephi, so I strongly recommend it.
Have your network visualizations ready to be looked at during class on Thursday.
NOTE 2: At around the 12:20 mark in the tutorial, I discuss a Partition tab. The newest version of Gephi doesn’t have that tab. It has an Attribute tab. Use the Attribute tab and you’ll find the Modularity Class option. Sorry for any confusion.
H 4/26: Class will meet; discuss Gephi visualizations Class Canceled for Conferences
Hand out Network Visualization Assignment
week 15: Returning to Participatory Culture–What Now?
T 5/1: Jenkins, Chapter 6
Monday, 5/7, 10:30am: In-class help session
Tuesday, 5/8: Final Draft due on study web site page (not post) by 11:00pm