Week 1 (Jan 8-14) – Intro to the Course
- (Delayed) Overview of the course, syllabus, expectations.
THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT MEDIA TECH
Week 2 (Jan 15-21) – The Camera’s Eye
- Reading: Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave,” On Photography (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973).
- Reading: Nathan Jurgenson, “The Facebook Eye,” The Atlantic, 13 Jan 2012.
- Notes: Here’s a nice outline of the Sontag chapter, with helpful images and background that provide context for some of Sontag’s key points.
- Assignments due this week:
- Reading Q&A #1 due by Fri, Jan 19 @ 5pm on Canvas.
- Create your blog for class or ask your professor for assistance (see the Assignments page for more info).
- Post a brief introduction on the designated Canvas discussion.
- Post a response to the Week #2 discussion, as well as a comment on someone else’s post. Due by Sunday @ 10pm.
For further reading & research:
- John Berger, “Uses of Photography,” About Looking (New York: Pantheon, 1980).
- Nathan Jurgenson, “Pics and it Didn’t Happen,” The New Inquiry, 7 Feb 2013.
- Nathan Jurgenson, “Temporary Social Media,” Snapchat Blog.
- Teenie Harris Archive.
- Farm Security Administration photo archive.
- Through a Lens Darkly (2014) – Excellent film documentary about African American photography history and representation
- War Photographer (2001) – Film documentary
THE CHANGING NATURE OF MEDIA AUDIENCES
Week 3 (Jan 22-28) – Early Radio & Listening
- Reading: Richard Butsch, “Voices from the Ether: Early Radio Listening” and “Radio Cabinets and Network Chains,” The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750-1990 (Cambridge University Press), pp. 173-207.
- Notes: Thinking About and With Technologies (as a supplement to our reading on radio)
- Assignment Due:
- Reading Q &A #2 by Sunday, Jan 28 @ 11:59pm
- Week #3 Discussion post by Sunday, Jan 28 @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- This book chapter offers an excellent history of early radio broadcasting.
- My COMM 100 powerpoint notes that discuss early mass communications policy related to radio.
- Prologue to Kristen Haring’s book, Ham Radio’s Technical Culture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006).
- Radio Unnameable – I highly recommend this documentary about an influential radio DJ in New York City, though the film really speaks to the power and possibilities of human interaction through radio. The website for the film is also accessible here.
- Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio – a Ken Burns documentary that offers some useful information about some key players in the development of radio technology, though it’s important to remember that many people, organizations and institutions were collectively responsible for “making radio,” and certainly not all of them were men.
- The following is a challenging read, but also a fascinating article about the history and idea of recording sound: Jonathan Sterne, “A Machine to Hear for Them: On the Very Possibility of Sound’s Reproduction,” Cultural Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2001): 259–294.
Week 4 (Jan 29-Feb 4) – Early TV & Advertising
- Reading: Lawrence R. Samuel, “The Precocious Prodigy, 1946-1952, and “Conclusion” in ” Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream (University of Texas Press, 2001), 3-45; 221-228.
- Assignments Due:
- Essay-Response #1 by Sunday, Feb 4 @ 11:59pm. Click here for the assignment.
- Week #4 Discussion post by Sunday, Feb 4 @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- Video: Television Tomorrow (old promotional clip) via Archive.org.
- Video: The Story of Television (1956) via Archive.org.
- Video: Television Under the Swatztika.
- Raymond Williams, excerpt from “The Technology and the Society,” in Television (London: Fontana, 1974).
- Lynn Spigel, “The Home Theater,” Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (1992), 99-135.
- Michael Z. Newman, “When Television Marries Computer,” Flow, Vol. 19, 2013.
- Mitchell Stephens, “History of Television.”
- Taylor Cole Miller, “Flow (Still) Matters,” Antenna, 23 Jan 2014.
- Amanda D. Lotz, “The Persistence of Television,” Flow, Vol. 19, 2014.
Week 5 (Feb 5-11) – From Listeners to Producers
- Reading: Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, “The Golden Age of Sampling” and “A Legal and Cultural History of Sound Collage,” in Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 19-73.
- Listen: Check out these music & sound examples mentioned in the reading:
- Watch: Copyright Criminals.
- Assignment Due:
- Reading Q&A #3 by Sunday, Feb 11 @ 11:59pm
- Week #5 Discussion post by Sunday, Feb 11 @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- Mini video documentary about (hip hop producer) J Dilla’s innovative use of AKAI MPC samplers.
- “They Say That I Stole This” – Audio recording of a 2010 conversation between Girl Talk, Public Enemy’s Hank Shocklee, and Duke Law Professor, James Boyle. Recorded and broadcasted via National Public Radio’s On the Media show. A transcript of the conversation is here.
- Interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee, “How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop,” Alternet, 2004.
- Stephen Witt, “The Man Who Broke the Music Business,” The New Yorker, April 27, 2015.
- “Iron Maiden are Proving that Piracy Can Save the Music Industry,” Aux TV, Dec 2, 2013.
- Watch Good Copy Bad Copy (2007).
Week 6 (Feb 12-18) – Game Players & Designers
- Reading: Michael Z. Newman, “The Name of the Game Is Jocktronics: Sport and Masculinity in Early Video Games,” in Eds. Robert Alan Brookey and Thomas P. Oates, Playing to Win : Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play (Indiana University Press, 2015), 23-44.
- Reading: Rey Junco, “Beyond ‘Screen Time:’ What Minecraft Teaches Kids,” The Atlantic, 28 April 2014.
- Reading: Jason Tanz, “Playing for Time,”A Father, a Dying Son, and the Quest to Make the Most Profound Videogame Ever,” Wired, Jan 2016.
- Watch: Yussef Cole and Tanya DePass, “Black Skin Is Still A Radical Concept in Video Games,” Waypoint (Vice Media), Mar 1 2017.
- Assignment Due:
- Essay-Response #2 by Sunday, Feb 18 @ 11:59pm
- Week #6 Discussion post by Monday, Feb 19 @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- Sam Riedel, “No Girls Allowed: The Fragility of Gaming Culture,” Bitch 11 May 2017.
- Saving the History of Video Games, Waypoint (Vice Media).
- Joystick Warriors – Documentary film (also accessible on the Kanopy playlist in the right menu).
- Eds. Robert Brookey and Thomas Oates, Playing to Win: Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015) – online text via Penn State Library.
- David S. Heineman, Thinking about Video Games : Interviews with the Experts (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015) – online text via Penn State Library.
- Betsy James, DiSalvo, Kevin Crowley and Roy Norwood, “Learning in Context: Digital Games and Young Black Men,” Games and Culture, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 2008): 131-141.
- Carol Stabile, “‘I Will Own You’: Accountability in Massively Multiplayer Online Games,” Television & New Media, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2014): 43–57.
- Eds. Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg, Digital Culture, Play and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008).
- Feminist Frequency, Damsel in Distress (Part 1) and (Part 2).
- Lisa Nakamura, “Gender and Race Online” (2014).
- Roger Stahl, “Have You Played the War on Terror?,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 23, No. 2 (June 2006): 112-130. You can also check out a video that follows up on the themes raised in Stahl’s article about military video games: http://pennstate.kanopystreaming.com/video/returning-fire
DIGITAL LIVES & LANDSCAPES
Week 7 (Feb 19-25) – Inventing Online Infrastructure & Culture
- Read (Only read through the top of p. 289): “The Internet,” in eds. Martin Campbell-Kelly et. al., Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 275-305.
- Read: Fred Tuner, “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 46 (2005): 486-512.
- Watch: At least the first hour of The Internet’s Own Boy.
- Notes: Competing visions of the digital future
- Assignments Due:
- Reading Q&A #4 by Sunday @ 11:59pm
- Week #7 Discussion post by Sunday @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- Ian Bogost, “The Internet Is Just Investment Banking Now,” The Atlantic, 4 Feb 2022.
- Samantha Cole, “The Death of Rusty n Edie’s, One of the Horniest Places on the 90s Internet,” VICE, 2 Feb 2022.
- Matt Lees, “What Gamergate should have taught us about the ‘alt-right’,” The Guardian, 1 Dec 2016.
- Dale Beran, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump,” Medium, 14 Feb 2017.
- “The Shaping of the Personal Computer” in eds. Martin Campbell-Kelly et. al., Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 229-251.
- “How the Internet Works” – a useful introductory book chapter, despite being published in 1992.
- Paul Levinson, “Blogging,” New New Media (Pearson, 2009).
Week 8 (Feb 26-Mar 4) – Googlization
- Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry) (University of California Press, 2012 Updated Edition). *Read the Introduction and Chapters 1, 2, 3 & 6.
- NOTE: In order to give everyone ample time to complete the assigned chapters from the book, I’m giving everyone two weeks to do the reading. Given the extra time, I added an additional chapter (chap 3) to the original assignment.
- Assignments Due:
Week #8 Discussion post by Sunday @ 11:59pmNO DISCUSSION POSTS DUE THIS WEEK. We’ll wait until the week after break to have a lengthier conversation online about this book. For the time being, just take some time to get the reading done and highlight questions and specific points you want to discuss later.
For further reading & research:
- Videos featuring Siva Vaidhyanathan:
- One of his talks on Google delivered at Stanford University after the publication of the book.
- An interview on CNN’s Reliable Sources.
- Jackie Snow, “Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse,” MIT Technology Review, 26 Feb 2018. NOTE: This is a short interview with author Safiya Umoja Noble, who recently published a book called Algorithms of Oppression (NYU Press, 2018).
Week 9 (Mar 5-11) – No Work / Spring Break
Week 10 (Mar 12-18) – Googlization Cont.
- Finish reading the chapters assigned in The Googlization of Everything.
- Assignments Due:
Reading Q&A #5 by Sunday @ 11:59pmEssay-Response #3 by Sunday @ 11:59pm- Week #10 Discussion post by Sunday @ 11:59pm
Week 11 (Mar 19-25) – Digital Dilemmas
- Reading: Nathan Jurgenson, “The IRL Fetish,” The New Inquiry, 28 June 2012.
- Reading: Davey Alba, “The Logan Paul Suicide Video Shows YouTube Is Facing A Crucial Turning Point,” Buzzfeed, 2 Jan 2018.
- Reading: Liz Pelly, “The Problem With Muzak,” The Baffler, 5 Dec 2017.
- Assignments Due:
- Reading Q&A #5 by Sunday @ 11:59pm
- Week #11 Discussion post by Sunday @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- Siva Vaidhyanathan: Belief in the Age of Social Media – a talk on Facebook given at the 2017 Chicago Humanities Festival.
- Alexis C. Madrigal, “Donald Trump Was the ‘Perfect Candidate’ for Facebook,” The Atlantic, 26 Feb 2018.
- Whitney Phillips, Jessica Beyer & Gabriella Coleman, “Trolling Scholars Debunk the Idea That the Alt-Right’s Shitposters Have Magic Powers,” Motherboard (Vice Media), Mar 22 2017.
- Julia Carrie Wong, “Former Facebook executive: social media is ripping society apart,” The Guardian, 12 Dec 2017.
- Molly Wood, Kristin Schwab & Stephanie Hughes, “How social media brought political propaganda into the 21st century,” Marketplace, 23 Oct 2017.
- Watch the PBS film Digital Nation.
Week 12 (Mar 26-April 1) – Hidden Labor
- Reading: Joshua Green and Henry Jenkins, “Spreadable Media How Audiences Create Value and Meaning in a Networked Economy,” in The Handbook of Media Audiences (Blackwell Publishing, 2011).
- Reading: Adrian Chen, “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed,” Wired, 23 Oct 2017.
- Notes: Some thoughts from your professor to frame this week’s readings.
- Assignments Due:
- Reading Q&A #6 by Sunday @ 11:59pm
- Week #12 Discussion post by Sunday @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- Shawn Wen, “The Ladies Vanish,” The New Inquiry, 11 Nov 2014.
- Andrew Ross, “In Search of the Lost Paycheck,” Digital Labor: The Internet at Playground and Factory, Ed. Trevor Scholz (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 13-32.
- Nicole S. Cohen, “Commodifying Free Labor Online: Social Media, Audiences and Advertising.”
- Wired documentary – “Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware” (2016)
- VICE documentary – “Conflict Minerals, Rebels and Child Soldiers in Congo” (2012)
- Jonathan Sterne, “Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media,” in Residual Media, ed. Charles Acland (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 16-31.
- There are some excellent related video essays & interviews with a host of digital media scholars on Vimeo. They are accessible on the Politics of Digital Culture page.
‘OLD’ MEDIA ARE STILL NEW
Weeks 13-14 (Apr 2-15) – Zines
- Reading: Stephen Duncombe, Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (Microcosm Publishing, 2008 or 2017). Read Chapters 1-4 and “Do Zines Still Matter”.
- Notes: Watch your professor blab about zines with no editing! (lol)
- Supplementary resources for this week: Zines!
- Assignments Due:
- Essay-Response #4 by Sunday @ 11:59pm
- Weeks #13-14 Discussion post by Sunday @ 11:59pm
Week 15-16 (Apr 16-29) – Comics
- Reading: Please read the following chapters in Hillary Chute, Why Comics? (Harper Collins, 2017):
- Introduction: Comics for Grown-Ups?
- Why Disaster?
- Why Superheroes?
- Why Girls?
- Why War?
- Assignments Due:
- Week #15 Discussion post by Sunday, April 22 @ 11:59pm
- Essay-Response Blog Post #5 by Sunday, April 29 @ 11:59pm
For further reading & research:
- A playlist of streaming documentaries about comics, via kanopy @ PSU Libraries.
- A free assortment of excellent books about comics, via Ebook Central @ PSU Libraries.
- The Comics Journal
- Benjamin Woo, “Comics Aren’t Literature and That’s Fine,” FLOW, 30 Oct 2017.
- Rob Sheffield, “‘Luke Cage’: Meet the First Black Lives Matter Superhero,” Rolling Stone, 5 Oct 2016.
Finals Week – Media Projects Due
- Submit your podcast or video to me by Sat, May 5 @ noon
- No additional readings or assignments due this week.
Bonus Readings: Political Prints & Paper Power
- Reading: Excerpts from Paper Politics. You can access the entire book through the PSU library here.
- Reading: Julie Perini, “Art as Intervention: A Guide to Today’s Radical Art Practices,” in (eds) Team Colors, Uses of a Whirlwind.
- Notes: Art as Political Communication
- Notes: Art as Intervention
For further reading and research:
- Justseeds Artists Cooperative
- Beehive Design Collective
- Interview with artist, Dylan Miner in måg, pp. 8-32.
- Directory of political murals in Ireland
- Paint for Peace (documentary on muralists in Ireland)
- Banksy (and his artwork in the Palestinian Territories)