CMNS 253 Syllabus - SFU Wiki

CMNS 253Introduction to Information Technology &Society: The New MediaFrederik LesageSchool of Communication, Fall 2011

Overview & Fit.............................................................................1Outline.........................................................................................2Prerequisites..........................................................................................................2Overview...............................................................................................................2Required Readings ................................................................................................ 2Grading.................................................................................................................2Syllabus.........................................................................................3Assignment One: Literacy....................................................................................3Assignment Two: Observe & Reflect....................................................................3Assignment Three: Literature Review..................................................................3Assignment Four: Group Video Project................................................................4Week 1 - Course overview.....................................................................................5Week 2 - What is New Media? .............................................................................. 5Week 3 - History .................................................................................................... 6Week 4 - Theory .................................................................................................... 6Week 5 - Mobility..................................................................................................6Week 6 - Social Networks & Participatory Culture...............................................6Week 7 - Midterm.................................................................................................6Week 8 - Games....................................................................................................6Week 9 - Creative industries.................................................................................7Week 10 - Knowledge Economy...........................................................................7Week 11 - Internet policy......................................................................................7Week 12 - Issues....................................................................................................7

Week 13 - Presentations........................................................................................7Week 14 - Final Exam (Exam Week) ..................................................................... 7Assignments..................................................................................1Assignment One: Literacy....................................................................................1Assignment Two: Observe & Reflect....................................................................3Assignment Three: Literature Review..................................................................5Assignment Four: Group Video Project................................................................5Attention, And Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies......1Low Stakes Writing......................................................................1Peer evaluation form....................................................................1Tetrad of media effects.................................................................1Chapter Outlines..........................................................................1Questions to Consider...........................................................................................1Chapter Outline....................................................................................................1Discussion Questions............................................................................................1Class Activities......................................................................................................2Questions to Consider...........................................................................................2Chapter Outline....................................................................................................3Discussion Questions............................................................................................3Class Activities......................................................................................................4Questions to Consider...........................................................................................4Chapter Outline....................................................................................................4

Discussion Questions............................................................................................5Class Activities......................................................................................................5Questions to Consider...........................................................................................6Chapter Outline....................................................................................................6Discussion Questions............................................................................................6Class Activities......................................................................................................7Questions to Consider...........................................................................................7Chapter Outline....................................................................................................8Discussion Questions............................................................................................8Class Activities......................................................................................................8Questions to Consider...........................................................................................9Chapter Outline....................................................................................................9Discussion Questions............................................................................................9Class Activities....................................................................................................10Questions to Consider.........................................................................................10Chapter Outline..................................................................................................11Discussion Questions..........................................................................................11Class Activities....................................................................................................12Questions to Consider.........................................................................................12Chapter Outline..................................................................................................12Discussion Questions..........................................................................................13Class Activities....................................................................................................13Questions to Consider.........................................................................................14

ParticipationParticipation is an extremely important aspect of your learning experience, in this and yourother CMNS courses. If you don't ask questions, respond to discussions and interact with yourpeers, your understanding of the material will be limited. We learn through engaging critically -in this case through spoken language - with ideas, subjecting them to a rigorous examination.Plus tutorials will be really boring if no one but the TA speaks!For these reasons we give marks for tutorial participation, 20% of your total grade. Thisincludes: 5 marks for attendance, 5 marks for completing all of the two-minute essays - these willbe submitted in person in tutorial; they are a type of low stakes writing. We also allocate 10 marksfor active participation - this means you come to tutorial prepared (e.g. having done the reading),and generate or contribute to the discussion in a thoughtful and respectful manner.ReadingsTerry Flew and Richard Smith. New Media: An Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2011.ISBN 9780195431810 http://amzn.to/253-FlewSmithHoward Rheingold’s “Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies,”EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 45, no. 5 (September/October 2010): 14–24. You can find a copyhere: http://bit.ly/253-attention. It is also included in this syllabus [Rheingold].ScheduleWEEK 1 - COURSE OVERVIEWThere are no tutorials in the first week, in keeping with School of Communication practice.In the lecture, I will introduce the course, talk about the assignments, and provide some contextand background to the course.As part of today's lecture, I will ask you to read Howard Rheingold’s “Attention, and Other21st-Century Social Media Literacies,” EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 45, no. 5 (September/October2010): 14–24. You can find a copy here: http://bit.ly/253-attention.If you have a laptop or other internet-enabled device (smart phone, tablet), please bring it to class. We willcomplete the first assignment, together, in class. If you don’t have a device to bring to class, don’t worry, you can doit in the lab or at home, later.WEEK 2 - WHAT IS NEW MEDIA?Tutorials start this week. To prepare for the lecture, please read Chapter 1 of the textbook,and pay special attention to the questions for discussion at the end of the chapter. Come to classprepared to discuss one of these. In particular, familiarize yourself with the brief history of theinternet and compare the difference between the early internet and so-called “Web 2.0.”

In preparation for Assignment Two, the tutorials will provide an opportunity to practiceobservation and reflection, and the difference between them. Your first assignment is due today.Hand it in during tutorial.WEEK 3 - HISTORYRead Chapter 2 of the textbook, paying special attention to the questions for discussion. Ifyou can, speak to a parent or grandparent about the early days of some older form of newmedia, such as radio or television.The TAs will conduct an exercise based on the class activities at the end of the chapter, andwork with you on Assignment Two.WEEK 4 - THEORYRead Chapter 3 of the textbook on approaches (theories, methods) to new media. There area number of different theories to cover as well as methods this week, which will require carefulreading on your part. Consider some of the social implications of the internet (Table 3.1) andcome prepared to provide a local (Vancouver, or your home community) example of one of them- positive or negative.Assignment Two is due today. Hand it in in tutorial. The tutorial will focus on activities fromthe chapter and a discussion of Assignment Three.WEEK 5 - MOBILITYRead Chapter 4 of the textbook on mobile technologies and mobile new media. Bring yourcell phone to class and be prepared to talk about how you use it (other than phone calls).Tutorials will focus on the reading and lecture. The TA will also be available to help you withAssignment Three, which is due next week.WEEK 6 - SOCIAL NETWORKS & PARTICIPATORY CULTURERead Chapter 5 of the textbook and think about your own use of social networks. Thinkback to the Rheingold reading at the beginning of the semester. Would you say you were“literate” in social networks in his sense of the term?We will do a review of the first half of the course in the second half of the lecture to help youprepare for the midterm.Assignment Three is due today, in tutorial, for peer review. You will do the peer review withanother student by swapping papers, and then hand in your final version in Week 10.WEEK 7 - MIDTERMThere is an in-class midterm this week. There are no tutorials after class. The exam is shortanswer, multiple choice, true-false. There will be 45 questions.WEEK 8 - GAMESRead Chapter 6 of the textbook and come to class prepared to defend your favorite computer(or console or mobile) game.

Tutorials will cover the lecture, activities from the chapter, and questions about AssignmentThree.WEEK 9 - CREATIVE INDUSTRIESRead Chapter 7 from the textbook and come to class prepared to discuss why you would, orwould not, wish to be employed in the “creative industries” after you graduate.Tutorials will cover the lecture, activities from the chapter, and any final questions aboutAssignment Three. Work on your projects.WEEK 10 - KNOWLEDGE ECONOMYRead Chapter 8 from the textbook. Is British Columbia well positioned in the knowledgeeconomy? Discuss the chapter, hand in Assignment Three, and then work on your projects intutorial.WEEK 11 - INTERNET POLICYRead Chapter 9 from the textbook. Are you concerned about copyright or other internetrelatedpolicies? Discuss the chapter, and work on your project in tutorial.WEEK 12 - ISSUESRead Chapter 10 from the textbook. What issues are you concerned about? Do theenvironmental impacts of new media bother you? We will wrap up the course, review thelectures, and take questions relating to the final exam. Discuss the chapter and work on yourproject in tutorial.WEEK 13 - PRESENTATIONSGroup presentations are today. Come to class for a “film festival” of your and your fellowstudents’ short videos, which comprise Assignment Four.WEEK 14 - FINAL EXAM (EXAM WEEK)The final exam is a long-answer essay style exam, mainly focused on the second half of thecourse. You will be asked to complete three of five questions.TutorialsThere are no tutorials in the first week of class, to provide time for the TAs to attend TAtraining day. After that there are tutorials each week except during the midterm (Week 7) and thelast class (Week 13).Tutorials are a core part of courses at SFU and you are expected to come to tutorial preparedby reading the assigned material, and being ready to discuss it. Try to read over the Questions toConsider at the beginning of each chapter as well as the Discussion Questions at the end. Reviewthe schedule for any additional suggestions.

Teaching assistants have office hours in addition to the scheduled tutorials. Take advantage ofthese by scheduling at least one session with your TA. If nothing else it will give you a chance tointroduce yourself.Each week during lecture there is a short (“two minute”) essay assignment. You should dothat on a piece of paper after the lecture and bring it with you to tutorial. These are not gradedindividually but your completion of these is part of your participation mark.

Chapter 3AssignmentsDetailed instructions for each assignmentASSIGNMENT ONE: LITERACYBackground: We all multitask, or think we do, but we incur serious costs when we do it ininappropriate situations. Remember the “girl who fell in the fountain while texting?” Or, muchmore sadly, the boy who fell from a parking garage and died while texting and walking?Sometimes it is very important that we multitask - for example we need to be aware of oursurroundings while walking down the street and having a conversation - but we need to do so in away that doesn’t impair our normal function and we need to know when and how to focus.Rheingold’s article, on “Attention and other 21st Century Literacies,” asks us to consider how wemanage attention but also how we participate, collaborate, understand networks, and be criticalof the vast river of information that threatens to overwhelm each of us, every day. He calls thelast one “crap detection.”In a recent XKCD comic (http://xkcd.com/862/), the author notes in his tooltip (the littlemessage the pops up when you let your mouse pointer linger over the cartoon) that he figured outa way to avoid constantly distracting himself - he added a 30 second delay to switchingapplications or windows. That’s one way to cope with one of Rheingold’s “literacies.” What areyours?Objective: The first assignment is designed to familiarize you with the class wiki and ensure youare able to contribute as well as locate information in it, as well as comment on other people’s

contributions. We also ask you to provide feedback on how you rate on Rheingold’s 21st centuryliteracies (reading assigned for week 1, and available below).Rationale: Much of your success in the course will depend on you being able to quickly andeasily navigate the course web site. We also want you to start to think critically about how youand others use social media, and we hope to lay the foundation for a “literate” usage of socialmedia in the course.Instructions: Visit the course wiki, create a page for yourself, and answer the following question:“How capable are you in terms of Howard Rheingold’s five literacies for the 21st century?Provide an example from your life that illustrates either the challenge that each literacy poses orhow you have coped with the challenge.” Incorporate other people’s answers into a closingparagraph. This will require that you do the first part of the assignment, then wait a few days,read others’ postings, and then complete the remainder. Do not write a lengthy answer for eachliteracy. A couple of sentences is sufficient. The whole thing should be about a screenful on thewiki.Step by step:Visit the course wiki: The URL changes semester by semester, but you should be able tofind the latest version here: https://wiki.sfu.ca/fall11/cmns253wd100/index.php/Main_PageCreate a page: Creating a page in a wiki can be confusing if you haven’t done it before.Here are some tips, based on the SFU implementation of wikimedia (the same software that runswikipedia):1. Visit the page for the course and navigate to the Assignment page (there should be a linkon the main page of the class wiki) and click on Assignment One. From there, navigate to theexample page and the list of students. Copy the questions into your clipboard (highlight thetext and then choose copy from the edit menu, or press CTRL-C (Windows) / CMD-C (Mac))and then click the button near the top that lets you edit the page.2. Once you are editing the page with the list of students, navigate to the section for yourtutorial, and insert your name under the last person in your group. The trick is to insert yourname like this (I will use my SFUid, “smith”, as an example): [[User:flesage|Frederik Lesage]].That is two square brackets, the word “User” followed by a colon and your SFUid, then avertical bar and then your full name and then two square brackets. Click the Save button on

the wiki page to save your work. The page will reload. Scroll down to your name and click thelink. You will be taken to a blank page which you can edit.3. Paste in the template text for the answer (which asks you to introduce yourself andcomment on Howard Rheingold’s five literacies for the 21st century) into the text box and thenstart putting your answers in between the questions. Save your work by clicking the save buttonon the wiki page. Do this right after class the first week. You can revisit the page any time andedit or add things.4. Let a few days go by and then start visiting other students pages. Decide on a couple thatyou find interesting and create a paragraph that is based on what you read there. Return toyour page, edit it, and add your concluding paragraph. Do this before the first tutorial (WeekTwo).If you have never edited a wiki before, you might find this a bit daunting but it is not thattough and there are plenty of tips online (since we use the same software as Wikipedia) for newusers. I have also created a video that explains the steps above. You can find it on YouTube, here:Due: Complete the first part after the first lecture. Finish it off by reading other people’ssubmissions and commenting on those in your final paragraph, then print it out, and bring it totutorial in week two.Grade: 10 marksASSIGNMENT TWO: OBSERVE & REFLECTBackground: A growing number of people participate in the use of multiple media at the sametime. This is related to growing rates of “multitasking” among people generally, and the way inwhich media are not just converging but evolving into new forms that are mutually reinforcing

and integrating. Henry Jenkins calls this “transmedia” and others, such as Jason Schell call itcross-media. (See http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=13052).One of the most important sites for this overlap has been the use of mobile devices alongsideold broadcast media. Two recent surveys have reported on this phenomenon:1. http://mashable.com/2011/02/01/deloitte-survey/2. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_86_use_mobile_devices_while_watching_tv.phpObjective: The second assignment asks you to pay attention to the differences between howpeople use old (broadcast, analogue) media such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, andbooks and how they use new (interactive, digital) media such as instant messaging, text messages,Facebook, and Twitter. We ask that you find situations where people are using both at the sametime (e.g., sending text messages while watching television).Rationale: We have crafted the assignment as a simulation of something that social scienceresearchers do, before starting a major research project: they observe things in the world and thenreflect on what that might mean. In the third assignment we simulate the next stage - seeing whatother researchers have already discovered about the topic.Instructions: This assignment is in three parts. For the first part, you are the research subject.Observe (take notes about what you are actually doing) and reflect (ask yourself why you didthose things, what you might have done differently) on your use of old and new mediasimultaneously.This is somewhat like the “reflective essay” that you might be asked to write as part of aentrance exam for university (see http://www.ehow.com/how_7916849_write-reflectionessay.htmlfor tips on those), but is specifically focused on this activity and is not intended toreveal your character but instead how you use two different media forms.You will find that it is easier to complete this assignment if you take use a sheet of paperdivided in half for your observations and reflections. Write the observations down one side, andthe reflections down the other side. Do the observations first, and then write reflections besideeach observation. Obviously you will have to do both of these retrospectively - after you completethe activity.The second part of the assignment is to repeat this process but observing four other people(for a total of five people, including yourself). It is not necessary to ask them any questions or gettheir names. Again, take notes on a sheet of paper divided into two columns. Do one person at atime, and try to have them doing the same or very similar examples of using old media and newmedia at the same time. A former student has provided this example: http://bit.ly/253-observe.The third part of this assignment is to write up a short essay using these notes as the basis ofyour essay. Your essay should be 750 to 1000 words long and printed in APA format and handedin to your TA with the research (your two column notes) stapled to the back. Include the wordcount at the end of the essay. The word count does not include the research notes.

Due: The assignment is due in tutorial in week 4.Grade: 10 marksASSIGNMENT THREE: LITERATURE REVIEWObjective: The third assignment brings you another step closer to an actual research project. Inthis assignment we ask that you locate scholarly research related to the phenomenon andtechnologies you used in your second assignment (e.g., television and text messaging). Yourobjective is to write a short literature review summarizing what the research tells us is alreadyknown about the topic.Rationale: Before a researcher (academic or in government or industry) goes out and spendstime and money doing research, she first wants to check and see what others have already done.This can help plan the project by identifying gaps in knowledge, theories and approaches that areuseful, and even sources for comparison. As a university student you will often be asked to includea literature review as part of a longer essay, so it should have applicability even if you don’tbecome a professor!Instructions: You should have at least three items in your literature review and they shouldcome from academic sources. There is a resource guide on the library web site (http://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/subject-guides/communication/cmns253) and we encourage you to makeuse of it.Write up a short essay based on your literature review. Include an opening paragraph thatexplains the technologies you chose and why you chose them (presumably they are the ones fromyour second assignment). End with a concluding paragraph in which you speculate on whatfurther research you would do on the topic and how you would do it. Your essay should be 750 to1000 words long and printed in APA format and handed in to your TA. Include the word countat the end of the essay. Detailed instructions are in the Assignments section.Due: The assignment is due in two stages. First, you bring it in for peer review during tutorialin week six. This is mandatory and part of your grade. Second, you hand in the final version,revised based on your peer review, during tutorial in week 10.Grade: 10 marksASSIGNMENT FOUR: GROUP VIDEO PROJECTObjective: Create a five minute digital video that incorporates sound, video, and graphicelements in a way that both helps people understand a new media technology and contributes toone (or more) of Rheingold’s 21st century literacies.Rationale: New media is a complex interaction of media elements (sound, images, graphics) aswell as narrative elements (storytelling, interactivity). We hope to give you an appreciation of thecomplexity of creating something for a new media audience and have some fun explaining newmedia concepts to the world.

This assignment is designed to give you an opportunity to: conduct research on new medialiteracies; create something practical and professional with new media; and use the internet tocoordinate and collaborate as a team.These projects are supposed to be fun, and we don't emphasize the technical side of things(too much), but we do have the requirement that you try to be "scholarly" in your project. Thisdoesn't mean you can't use humour, or that it has to become the video version of a term paper. Itdoes mean that you have to have an approach to the content as well as to the form/style of theproject.Instructions: These projects are supposed to be fun, and we don't emphasize the technical sideof things (too much), but we do have the requirement that you try to be "scholarly" in yourproject. This doesn't mean you can't use humour, or that it has to become the video version of aterm paper. It does mean that you have to have an approach to the content as well as to theform/style of the project.We have created a series of weekly milestones to ensure success. Probably the most importantthing to remember is that we are not as much interested in your production skills as your ideas.Week 8: Form Teams and Identify TopicForm a team up with at least three other students from your tutorial to create your video.Groups of five are acceptable with your TAs permission. Together, you will produce a short (5minute) video about a specific new media and how it can be used to contribute to or used topromote one of Rheingold’s literacies.Topics should be approved by your TA. Consider your first assignments - and the researchyou have already done - as possible topic ideas. Remember, new media isn’t confined toFacebook, Twitter, and YouTube; for other examples, see:http://mashable.com/tag/features-week-in-review/There are many things to consider when you are choosing roles for group members: who hasaccess to a camera, microphone, and editing software? Does anyone have experience with these?Your group members and topic need to be finalized in tutorial in week 8 and posted to the wiki.Week 9: Task Assignment/Roles, ResearchA project of this size needs to be done in an organized way. It requires a leader and it needspeople working on specialized tasks. There will be research roles (crafting the story, the evidence,doing interviews, writing) and production roles. Research roles should be shared in the group.Production roles can be specialized.Consider the following roles as a starting point to divide up tasks and responsibilities:Director, Producer, Editor, Script/Screenwriter, Camera Operator, Graphic Artist. Each personin your group may have one or more of these roles. You can also share roles. This is intended tobreak up the work so all members can contribute equally. A list of roles is due on the wiki in week9.

Week 10: Consolidate your ResearchOnce you have your topic and group members finalized, and research has begun, you shouldcreate an outline of your material. The outline should include 5-10 main points, including adescription of the literacy according to Rheingold, the new media tool you’ve selected, and theway(s) in which it can be used to enhance or promote that literacy. Locate real-life examples, orcreate fictional uses, that show how this new media can be used professionally and responsibly.Due in week 10 on the wiki.Week 11: Bring it together, create a script.Short videos like this are made up of objects. Your story (based on research) is key, but thereare the images (still and moving) as well as sound effects, graphics, titles and credits, etc. A list ofthe objects you intend to use is due on the wiki in week 11.In order to create a meaningful & organized video (remember, these are intended to bescholarly!) you will need to create a script for you video. You do not have to script out all thedialogue and stick exactly to it, but you do need to create an outline of how your video will flow.Doing this beforehand greatly improves the narrative structure of your video. Your script is dueon the wiki in week 11.Week 12: ProductionFinally, it’s time to do some filming and editing. Make sure to schedule ample time for thisstep, as schedules and technical snags can cause serious delays. Timely completion of theprevious steps gives you plenty of time to film and edit. If you are interviewing anybody, theyneed to sign a release form!Your video documentary should be no longer than 5 minutes in length (we will allow up to 30seconds over, to allow for titles and such, but going beyond 5.5 minutes will be considered a daylate and result in marks docked) and should be uploaded to YouTube and linked to the Wiki. Youshould have a link on your group page as well as on a page that I will create for the finalsubmissions all together. All of the videos will be presented in lecture on the last day of class.To recap:• Form group, pick topic - Do in tutorial, post on the Wiki Week 8• List of Group Roles - Week 9 via the Wiki• Outline of topic, approach, main points - Week 10 via the Wiki• List of "objects" (images, clips, animation) and script - Week 11 via the Wiki• Filming/editing/upload - Week 12• Final Video Presentation - Week 13, in classTechnical considerations:

You will be expected to use editing software to turn your video into a cohesive whole ratherthan a series of parts. Basic editing software such as iMovie (Mac) and Movie Maker (Windows)will be fine. If you don’t know how to use these, start playing around in them now to get yourselfacquainted with them!There are scores of online guides to movie making. As part of the project, you are required toread this BBC article (although your videos will be longer than one minute.)http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/oneminutemovies/howto/.You are going to need a camera and possibly a microphone. We depend on students usingtheir own equipment, and base our requirements and our expectations on both the diversity ofequipment that students might bring. That said, the University (especially the Surrey campus) hassome resources for you. Here is a link: http://library.elinc.ca/ to both tutorials and informationon borrowing.EvaluationThis assignment is out of 20. The following marking scheme will be used:Preparation and research posted to the wiki: (Maximum 9 marks)up to 1 mark - List of Group Members and Resources.up to 1 mark - Outlineup to 5 marks - Initial researchup to 1 mark - List of Group Roles.up to 1 mark - Video Script.Video Documentary: (Maximum 10 marks)For each of the following categories, the following rating scale will be used:0 - unacceptable ; 2.5 - poor ; 5 - satisfactory ; 7.5 - good ; 10 - excellentBasics• Within the time length.• Title, credits and graphic elements as needed.Audio/Video Quality• Audio is not too loud or too soft, not full of echo, not muddy or scratchy.• Lighting is appropriate.• People's faces are visible; people are not too far away or too close.• Edits are smooth; camera is steady.Research• Selected material supports and enhances the video.

The Show• The overall success of the video - amusing, engaging, informative, etc.The resulting mark, out of 40, will be divided by 4 to obtain a grade out of 10 marks.Bonus: (Maximum 1 mark)For exceptional work in any of the above areas.Due: This assignment is due, in class, during the last lecture. However, there are multiplecomponents that are due prior to submitting this video. Consider this video a process! See belowfor various due dates. We will screen all of the student videos together that day.Grade: 20 marks

Chapter 4Attention, And Other 21st-Century Social Media LiteraciesHoward Rheingold© 2010 Howard Rheingold. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0).EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 45, no. 5 (September/October 2010): 14–24Howard RheingoldHoward Rheingold (howard@rheingold.com) is the author of Tools For Thought, TheVirtual Community, Smart Mobs, and other books and is currently lecturer at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, and Stanford University.If you were the only person on earth who knew how to use a fishing rod, you would betremendously empowered. If you were the only person on earth who knew how to read andwrite, you would be frustrated and empowered only in tiny ways, like writing notes to yourself.When it comes to social media, knowing how to post a video or download a podcast—technology-centric encoding and decoding skills—is not enough. Access to many mediaempowers only those who know how to use them. We need to go beyond skills and technologies.We need to think in terms of literacies. And we need to expand our thinking of digital skills orinformation literacies to include social media literacies.Social media—networked digital media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and wikis—enablepeople to socialize, organize, learn, play, and engage in commerce. The part that makes socialmedia social is that technical skills need to be exercised in concert with others: encoding,decoding, and community.I focus on five social media literacies:AttentionParticipationCollaborationNetwork awarenessCritical consumption

Although I consider attention to be fundamental to all the other literacies, the one that linkstogether all the others, and although it is the one I will spend the most time discussing in thisarticle, none of these literacies live in isolation.[1] They are interconnected. You need to learnhow to exercise mindful deployment of your attention online if you are going to become a criticalconsumer of digital media; productive use of Twitter or YouTube requires knowledge of whoyour public is, how your participation meets their needs (and what you get in return), and howmemes flow through networked publics. Ultimately, the most important fluency is not inmastering a particular literacy but in being able to put all five of these literacies together into away of being in digital culture.AttentionAttention is the fundamental building block for how individuals think, how humans createtools and teach each other to use them, how groups socialize, and how people transformcivilizations. We share highly evolved attentional mechanisms with other species, but Homosapiens sapiens are particularly distinguished by the way we use our attention and other cognitivefaculties differently from all other creatures.Attention is also important in the classroom. This came home to me five years ago when Istarted teaching and saw what most teachers in the world, at least at the college level, see thesedays: students who are staring down, looking at their computers, not making eye contact with theteacher. In the Japanese language, one pays attention with ki, which means "life energy." Anypublic speech is an exchange of ki. For me, I felt this exchange was broken when students werenot looking at me while I was talking to them. Yet for their part, students feel a strong sense ofentitlement to the freedom to direct their attention wherever they want. For students, theclassroom is a marketplace, with multiple seductive attractions from the online world competingwith physical presence. If I can't compete with the Internet for their attention, that's my problem.Because I teach social media, I can neither ignore nor flatly forbid their use of laptops duringclass. In return for trying to live up to such a demanding standard on my own part, I ask mystudents to do me the favor of beginning to become aware of how they are deploying theirattention, especially with regard to social media, during class. I suggest that they extend theirdeliberate media mindfulness beyond the classroom, just as an experiment.Multitasking, or "continuous partial attention" as Linda Stone has called another form ofattention-splitting, or "hyper attention" as N. Katherine Hayles has called another contemporaryvariant,[2] are not necessarily bad alternatives to focused attention. It depends on what ishappening in our own external and internal worlds at the moment. If we don't know enough toturn around when we hear a bicycle or automobile horn, we're not going to survive long. Clearlywe have different forms of attention that are appropriate for different ways of doing things.Sometimes we need to "turn on all the lights" in order to be aware of as much as possible.Sometimes we need to be vigilant to information outside our focal area, and at other times weneed to block out distractions and narrow our attention to a spotlight.To complicate the issue in my own mind, some of the multitaskers in my classes are Astudents and passionately defend the value of Googling me to see if I really know what I'm

talking about, while other students readily admit that multitasking in the classroom means theyspend less attention on the teacher and on the other students. I looked around to see what otherprofessors were doing. Harvard Business School and the University of Chicago Law Schooloutraged students when they banned web access in classrooms. Web surfing during lectures hadgotten out of control, to the point that the faculty felt an intervention was necessary.[3] MichaelBugeja, a journalism professor at Iowa State University, conducted an online survey of severalhundred students and found that a majority had used their cellphones, sent or read e-mail, andgone onto social network sites during class time.[4] The kicker was that a quarter of the surveyrespondents admitted that they completed his survey while attending another class.So maybe it's simply that many students have not yet learned how to exercise their attention.Because of the attentional demands of wirelessly webbed always-on media, they need to learn toturn on the high-beam light of focused attention when necessary and recognize when it is trulybeneficial to task-switch. I decided to conduct some ongoing probes with my students into thedynamics of the literacy of attention. The first thing I do in my class now is ask the students toturn off their cellphones, shut their laptops, and close their eyes. I tell them that I will let themknow when 60 seconds have gone by, and I ask them to just do nothing but notice what happensin their minds, to observe where their attention would go without any external distractions. Ofcourse, anybody who meditates knows that your mind is pretty much out of control. Yourattention can go anywhere: to yesterday, to tomorrow. It will free-associate without any realvolition on your part. I simply want the students to start from the zero state, before the seductivedistractions start building up—and to begin to experience a kind of internal observer that wakesup and notices when the student's attention is wandering. After they open their eyes, I ask them tokeep their laptops closed, and I add that I will upload my notes for that first lecture so theyshouldn't have to worry about taking notes. But because my intention is to probe, not control,and ultimately to instill in students an experience of some reflection about their media practices,I did not outright ban the use of laptops.Another probe that I conduct with my classes involves student teaching teams, who co teachthe class with me. Those three students can keep their laptops open and take notes for everyoneelse in the class, using the course wiki. The rest of the students can fill in the wiki after class.Many students object that they can't learn unless they are able to take notes, and I agree thattaking notes is an important way to learn. But I'm not sure it's the only way. After these firstprobes, I don't put restrictions on whether or not their laptops are open, but I ask them to makenote of where their attention goes during the class session—and I ask the co-teachers to note howit feels when their fellow students aren't looking at them while they are talking.In a third probe, I tell a class of about forty students that five of them can keep their laptopsopen at any one time but that when a sixth laptop opens, they all have to close their laptops forthe rest of the class time. I leave it up to them to figure out how that will work. In both this andthe previous type of probe, I stress to the students from the beginning that the idea is simply todevelop some mindfulness about where they put their attention, about how to pay attention towhat they're doing.

As students become more aware of how they are directing their attention, I begin toemphasize the idea of using blogs and wikis as a means of connecting with their public voice andbeginning to act with others in mind. Just because many students today are very good at learningand using online applications and at connecting and participating with friends and classmates viasocial media, that does not necessarily mean that they understand the implications of theirparticipation within a much larger public.ParticipationParticipation is a broader literacy. 1.5 billion people are on the Internet. The number ofmobile phone subscriptions is expected to reach 5 billion this year, with about 100 million ofthose phones including cameras. We're seeing the results of this connectivity all the time. Andeven though many excruciatingly boring blogs and Facebook/MySpace/Twitter accounts attestto the fact that that there is something to be learned about how to participate in a way that'svaluable to others as well as to yourself, I agree with Yochai Benkler, Henry Jenkins, and othersthat participating, even if it's no good and nobody cares, gives one a different sense of being inthe world. When you participate, you become an active citizen rather than simply a passiveconsumer of what is sold to you, what is taught to you, and what your government wants you tobelieve. Simply participating is a start. (Note that I am not guaranteeing that having a sense ofagency compels people to perform only true, good, and beautiful actions.)The technologies that we have in our pockets today are powerful engines for participation.My students and I carry computers that are literally millions of times more powerful than whatthe U.S. Department of Defense had a couple decades ago, networked at speeds millions of timesfaster than the first online networks. We are seeing a massive adoption of an attitude of activeparticipation simply through the use of these technologies. According to a 2005 report from thePew Internet and American Life Project, 87 percent of U.S. teenagers, across all class and ethnicboundaries, are online in some way. Over half of U.S. teenagers not only consume but also createand author online, whether that's by customizing their MySpace page, or running a blog, orrunning a YouTube channel.[5] That doesn't mean, however, that all forms of participation arebeneficial to the participant or others.I don't believe in the myth of the digital natives who are magically empowered and fluent inthe use of social media simply because they carry laptops, they're never far from their phones,they're gamers, and they know how to use technologies. We are seeing a change in theirparticipation in society—yet this does not mean that they automatically understand the rhetoricsof participation, something that is particularly important for citizens. The whole notion of thepublic sphere is that we have sufficiently well-educated citizens who are free to access informationabout workings of the state so that they will be able to govern themselves. Implicit in the notionthat ordinary people can shape policies of state is the assumption that they know how tocommunicate their opinions in concert with other citizens in a productive manner—a literacy ofparticipation.

Today's media enable people to inform, persuade, and influence the beliefs of others and,most important, help them to organize action on all scales. In doing so, people move from theliteracy of participation to the literacy of collaboration.CollaborationUsing the technologies and techniques of attention and participation allows people to worktogether collaboratively in ways that were too difficult or expensive to attempt before the adventof social media. Though collaboration has a slightly different definition from cooperation andcollective action, in general doing things together gives us more power than doing things alone.Collaboration among secondary school students in Chile in 2006 led to the "PenguinRevolution," so called because of the students' black-and-white school uniforms. What started asa relatively small walk-out and protest calling for education reform soon grew as the students,fourteen to seventeen years old, used social media such as text-messaging and YouTube to spreadtheir message. They chained the doors of public schools in Chile and organized rallies with asmany as 800,000 attendees, leading the Chilean government to increase spending on educationand reexamine the country's educational system.[6]But it's not just young people who are collaborating via social media. In January 2007, JimGray, a computer scientist with Microsoft Research, took his sailboat out on San Francisco Baybut did not come back that evening. His friends at Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and elsewherejoined together. They got the latest photos of that area of the ocean from NASA and fromGoogle, and Microsoft engineers divided these into half a million images, which they posted onAmazon's Mechanical Turk. Approximately 12,000 volunteers searched through those half amillion images in a couple of days. Although there is no "look for your missing friend at sea"infrastructure or formula, Gray's friends put together various web technologies and organized aneffort involving thousands of volunteers. Sadly, they never found Jim Gray.[7]Volunteers are also collaborating in response to natural disasters. People always rush intoburning buildings. People always give first aid. But now we are seeing a global emergent collectiveresponse to disasters, before the official emergency responders arrive on the scene. Within hoursof the Asian tsunami, for example, the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog had beenset up.[8] After the Katrina hurricane in the United States dispersed people from New Orleans,their relatives didn't know where they were. The various notices posted on Craigslist, on Usenet,and on half a dozen different sources were consolidated into a uniform database through theKatrinaHelp Wiki, implemented by thousands of volunteers.[9]A final example from hundreds that I have identified is Twestival (or Twitter Festival). Thefirst Twestival Global, held in 2009, supported the nonprofit organization charity:water.Approximately 1,000 volunteers and 10,000 donors raised more than $250,000—enough moneyto drill 55 wells in Uganda, Ethiopia, and India, bringing clean water to more than 17,000people. A network of volunteers were mobilized to get things done for the social good withoutgoing through official channels—which moves us toward the next literacy.[10]

Network AwarenessCollaboration phases into network awareness, which is a bit more complicated.[11] Whereaswe lived in an industrialized society in the 19th century and in an information society in the 20thcentury, we live in a networked society today in the 21st century. Social networks are an essentialpart of being human, but in the past there were physical limitations on which people and howmany people we could include in our network. For example, if we were speaking, we couldcommunicate only with the people who could hear us directly. Now, technological networksranging from the telephone to the Internet have vastly expanded the number and the variety ofthe people we can contact. These networks multiply our innate human capacity for socialnetworking and lower the thresholds for organizing with others, allowing us to contact people onthe other side of the world in a matter of seconds."Reed's law" explains the connection between these computer networks and our socialnetworks. David P. Reed noted: "There are really at least three kinds of value that networks canprovide: the linear value of services that are aimed at individual users, the 'square' value fromfacilitating transactions, and the exponential value for facilitating group affiliations. What'simportant is that the dominant value in a typical network tends to shift from one category toanother as the scale of the network increases." As Reed explains, content (e.g., published storiesand images, consumer goods) is king when a network is dominated by linear connections. As thescale of the network shifts upward, transactions (e.g., e-mail, voice-mail, securities, services)become central. Finally, at the group-forming level, the value lies in joint construction (e.g.,newsgroups, virtual communities, gossip, auctions, organizing get-out-the-vote campaigns).[12]The technical networks amplify and extend the fundamental human capability of formingsocial networks. Understanding the nature of networks—technical and social—is essential. Doingso is not just a matter of engineering but also a question of freedom. When it comes to theunderlying code that moves the bits around, the structure of the Internet is about not onlyprogramming but also the location of control. Whether you look at the issue as a citizen, anentrepreneur, a scientist, a journalist, or a cultural producer, what you know or don't know abouthow networks work can influence how much freedom, wealth, and participation you will have inthe rest of this century. (The commercial and political debates about "net neutrality" are directedat these issues: who will control the freedom to innovate online?)I think that much of this is understood by some of the people who post on blogs and onFacebook and on Twitter. They understand how small-world and long-tail networks function.They also understand the notions of reputation and diffuse reciprocity, which are increasinglyimportant online. Both educators and learners use these notions to tune and feed their networks,to build their personal learning networks. Online, you have to decide which people you are goingto allow into your attention sphere. Who is going to take up your mind, your space? Is the persontrustworthy? Entertaining? Useful? An expert? Answering these questions leads to the finalliteracy: critical consumption.

Critical Consumption ("Crap Detection")Critical consumption, or what Ernest Hemingway called "crap detection," is the literacy oftrying to figure out what and who is trustworthy—and what and who is not trustworthy—online.If you find people, whether you know them or not, who you can trust to be an authority onsomething or another, add them to your personal network. Consult them personally, consult whatthey've written, and consult their opinion about the subject.The authority of the text that goes back at least a thousand years has been overturned. In thepast we could go to the library and take out a book to read; we might disagree with the book, butprobably somebody, or several somebodies, had been paid to check the factual claims in the book.When we get information online today, there is no guarantee that it's accurate or even that it's nottotally bogus. The authority is no longer vested in the writer and the publisher. The consumer ofinformation has to be a critic and has to inquire about the reality of the information presented.How do we do that? The first step isn't that hard. We ask the primary questions: Who is theauthor, and what do other people say about that author? We put the author's name in a searchengine, keeping our critical glasses on. So step one is knowing how to ask that question, knowinghow to query the search engine. Next, who are the people who give opinions about the author?What are the author's sources? Who links to the author? This second step is trickier. Basically,how do we know that what we find is accurate? We all have to be detectives these days.[13]Finally, crap detection takes us back, full circle, to the literacy of attention. When I assign mystudents to set up an RSS reader or a Twitter account, they panic. They ask how they aresupposed to keep up with the overwhelming flood of information. I explain that social media isnot a queue; it's a flow. An e-mail inbox is a queue, because we have to deal with each message inone way or another, even if we simply delete them. But no one can catch up on all 5,000 or sounread feeds in their RSS reader; no one can go back through all of the hundreds (or thousands)of tweets that were posted overnight. Using Twitter, one has to ask: "Do I pay attention to this?Do I click through? Do I open a tab and check it out later today? Do I bookmark it because Imight be interested in the future?" We have to learn to sample the flow, and doing so involvesknowing how to focus our attention.InterconnectionJust as the print technologies and literacies shaped the Enlightenment, the social mediatechnologies and literacies will shape the cognitive, social, and cultural environments of the 21stcentury. As Jenkins and his colleagues have emphasized, education that acknowledges the fullimpact of networked publics and digital media must recognize a whole new way of looking atlearning and teaching. This is not just another set of skills to be added to the curriculum.Assuming a world in which the welfare of the young people and the economic health of a societyand the political health of a democracy are the true goals of education, I believe modernsocieties need to assess and evaluate what works and what doesn't in terms of engaging studentsin learning.

If we want to do this, if we want to discover how we can engage students as well as ourselvesin the 21st century, we must move beyond skills and technologies. We must explore also theinterconnected social media literacies of attention, participation, cooperation, networkawareness, and critical consumption.Notes[1] These broad outlines of digital literacies are necessarily condensed, especially networkawareness. I am working on a book for MIT Press, scheduled for Spring 2012 publication, andcontinue to report on these issues via and .[2] Linda Stone, "Continuous Partial Attention," ;N. Katherine Hayles, "Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Dividein Cognitive Modes," Profession 2007, pp. 187–199, .[3] Josh Waitzkin, "7 Habits Essential for Tackling the Multitasking Virus," Zen Habits, June9, 2008, .[4] Samuel G. Freedman, "New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology," New York Times,November 7, 2007, .[5] Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden, "Teen Content Creators and Consumers," PewInternet and American Life Project, November 2, 2005, .[6] Monte Reel, "Chile's Student Activists: A Course in Democracy," Washington Post,November 25, 2006, .[7] Steve Silberman, "Inside the High Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend,"Wired, July 24, 2007, .[8] South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, .[9] Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell, "Internet Matchmaking: Those Offering Help and ThoseNeeding It," New York Times, November 14, 2005, .[10] Milo Yiannopoulos, "Twestival Raises over $250,000 for charity:water (and They're StillCounting),"Telegraph.co.uk, February 18, 2009, .[11] For more on network awareness, see .

[12] David P. Reed, "That Sneaky Exponential: Beyond Metcalfe's Law to the Power ofCommunity Building," .[13] An entire curriculum could be based around this process. For more of my thoughts onthis literacy, see "Crap Detection 101," San Francisco Chronicle, June 30, 2009, .

Chapter 5Low Stakes WritingWriting to Explore, Summarize or Critique a ConceptThroughout the semester students do 10 short writing assignments to help them determinewhether they can explain concepts introduced in the lectures. Typically, these low-stakes activitiestake the form of 2-minute essays, done during or at the end of a lecture. Students may be askedto explain or define the significance or implications of ideas raised in the lecture ideas orconcepts that remain unclear, a key concept from the readings, or an important point raised inthe tutorials.General Learning Objectives:These writing-to-learn activities provide students an opportunity to• clarify key concepts and ideas• reflect on what they have learned• prepare for higher-stakes written assignments• practice composing concise written responses• receive feedback from the instructorProcess:Students are asked to respond to key questions or prompts by handwriting short answers onindex cards or other small pieces of paper. Students take 1-2 minutes to respond to theinstructor’s question/prompt. The cards are handed in to the instructor or TA at the end of thesession. The instructor reads all of the responses and may (if necessary) provide general feedbackto students in the following session (ex: ideas discussed may be used as a point of departure forthe following lecture or concepts may be revisited for further clarification). If students wantspecific feedback on their responses, they are asked to provide their names and email addressesfor electronic feedback.Sample Activity Prompt:Take 2 minutes to explain the significance and implications of (x). Write quickly with thepurpose of explaining as fully as you can but without trying to construct a formal paper – youjust want to set out some ideas to show what you understand or don’t understand at this point.Your writing will not be graded. Your grammar, spelling and writing style will not be critiqued.

Chapter 6Peer evaluation formUse as part of Assignment FourScore your team members on three dimensions. First, how well they helped the group defineand shape the questions in your project. This is where you consider their contributions in termsof critical thinking. Second, how well they helped the group come up with the answers in yourproject. This is where you consider their contributions to doing the work. Finally, score them on theshow: how well they helped the team prepare and deliver the presentation. You have one extra mark(for each person) to give for exceptional performance in any one (or all three) of these categories.For each category score your team members on a scale from zero to three. Zero is forsomeone who did not contribute in that area. One is for someone who did a lackluster job in thearea but did contribute. Two is for someone who did a normal job in the area. Three is forsomeone who did an exceptional job in the area.Print up this page and hand it to your TA on the last day of class. You have to participate inorder to get your own peer grade, which is counted as part of the 20 marks for this assignment.TEAM NAME: ! ! ! ! !TEAM MEMBERʼSNAMEQUESTIONS(/3)ANSWERS(/3)SHOW(/3)EXTRA(/1)TOTAL(/10)

Chapter 7Tetrad of media effectsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaGenerally speaking, a tetrad is any set of four things. In Laws of Media (1988) and TheGlobal Village (1989), published posthumously, Marshall McLuhan summarized his ideas aboutmedia in a concise tetrad of media effects. The tetrad is a means of examining the effects onsociety of any technology/medium (put another way: a means of explaining the social processesunderlying the adoption of a technology/medium [1]) by dividing its effects into four categoriesand displaying them simultaneously. McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool,phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium:What does the medium enhance? What does the medium make obsolete? What does themedium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? What does the medium flip into when pushedto extremes?The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow thequestioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. McLuhan departsfrom his mentor Harold Innis in suggesting that a medium "overheats", or reverses into anopposing form, when taken to its extreme. [2]Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. For example, radio amplifiesnews and music via sound.Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. Radio reduces theimportance of print and the visual.Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. Radio returns thespoken word to the forefront.Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. Acoustic radio flips intoaudio-visual TV.Footnotes[1] Meta-Four-Play: McLuhan's Tetrad and Lévi-Strauss's Canonical Formula Part 2[2] "Tetrad" in Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan, a virtualmuseum exhibition at Library and Archives Canada. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innismcluhan/030003-2030-e.html.

Chapter 8Chapter OutlinesChapter 1: IntroductionQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. In what ways is communication mediated by technology? Why is this significant?2. Why is it important to think about nuanced understandings of what ‘new media’ means?3. How can ‘digital divide’ be variously understood and what are the causes andconsequences of such divides?4. In what ways is globalization significant when thinking about new media?5. Why do you think the Internet and Web 2.0 have become so popular? What are somebenefits and drawbacks of this popularity?CHAPTER OUTLINEIn this chapter we consider what society finds novel in new media and what role new mediaplays in wider social change, as it is already deeply embedded in the debates, processes, andpracticalities of our society. We explore how new media is an outcome of the digitization ofcontent, which has enabled ‘CONVERGENCE’—the process by which media technologies,industries, and services are merging—through changes in computing, communication networks,and content. Although convergence is important, we attempt to put these changes in perspectiveand recognize that long-standing social, cultural, political, and economic factors remainimportant and mitigate and filter the impact of technological change. This chapter explains thecharacteristics of digital information and how those characteristics result in a particular type ofcommunication that can be summed up as interactive. We examine the Internet as one of themost important new media forms of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, andreview Internet history, social implications, and recent growth into Web 2.0, focusing on theimportance of search engines. We also look at the importance of online encylopedias, statusupdates, friend lists, and online video, in the context of a growing and globalizing technology.The chapter concludes with a deeper examination of the implications of convergence on how wecreate and consume media content and the role of Web 2.0 in this process.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. What are some key differences between what we would today refer to as ‘new media’ andthe media that preceded it?

2. How is ‘convergence’ a term that is prone to confusion? In what ways are the currenttrends in convergence perhaps only the tip of the iceberg?3. In what ways do new media devices affect our communication activities and practices, aswell as larger social arrangements and organizations?4. Comment on the following: ‘The quality of participation increases as the number ofparticipating users increases, and this in turn attracts more new users to the sites.’5. What does it mean to describe the Internet as having graduated from being a computernetwork akin to a highway to a ‘place’ that can allow people to ‘understand the world aroundthem’?6. What are some of ‘the cultural practices that enable users to engage with the technology’and what best describes the ‘hidden engine of the user’s interaction with the text’?7. Give a close reading to the following: ‘Media studies as it emerged in the twentiethcentury understood media production, texts, and audiences as discrete forms, following alinear model of different “moments” in the media production-consumption cycle.’ What doesthis mean and what are the implications?8. In what ways do trends in new media reflect trends in globalization?CLASS ACTIVITIES1. In groups of five with your classmates, discuss which websites you spend the most time atper day and the activities you engage in with those sites. Consider if those activities were thesame a year ago, what changes have occurred, and why. Discuss with your group what youthink about the growing use of social media.2. Visit a website, such as Alexa, that provides a list of the ‘top ten’ sites in the world. Take alook at the sites you might not be familiar with and classify these sites into different types.3. Given the global nature of much new media, compile a list of local, or regional, websitesthat you are aware of or use for news, information, entertainment, and so on. Compare thesewith some national or multinational sites. What are the key differentiators?Chapter 2:The History of New MediaQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. What are some challenges of human communication in terms of sending and receivingmessages across distances? How have these changed over time?2. In what ways have advances in communications and connectivity been historically linkedto key enabling technologies, institutional configurations, business models, and products andservices? How are these links still evident today?

3. In what ways was privacy a concern in media technology of the past? How does it remaina concern today?4. What ideological or political implications are there to consider in regard to policies,practices, and changes/advances in communications and new media?CHAPTER OUTLINEThis chapter sets new media in its historical context, drawing connections between currentnetwork technologies, convergence trends, and prior inventions such as the telegraph, radio, andtelevision. Although the path has been circuitous, ever since we have been able to send messageswithout moving physical objects (the first telegraph), the immediacy factor has forever changedour expectations about communication media. With new capabilities came new institutions andsocial arrangements and these have proven to be foundational and influential for subsequentgenerations of media.Journalism, politics, and business were all transformed by the use of the telegraph and thetelephone. Radio, and later television, provided a testing ground for key elements of new mediaand in particular the business model in which content could be accessed for free, if one waswilling to accept a little bit of advertising with that content. The chapter concludes with a briefdiscussion of the educational potential of earlier new media.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. In what ways has connectivity changed over time? What are some examples ofcommunication technologies that were soon taken for granted? Why might that be the case?2. In your view, is there a problem with over-use of communications technology and newmedia and, if so, with which technologies and what are the consequences?3. To what extent is privacy a concern for you as a user of communications technology andnew media? How has privacy as a concern changed over time?4. What are some changes in how news has historically been moved from one location toanother and what effects have these changes had on how news is captured, presented, andshared? What are the corollary effects on society?5. In what ways does the value of a network increase as more people make use of it (orcould the argument be made that the opposite is true in some cases)? What are some otherconsequences of increased network activity, in terms of points of contact as well as content?6. How has telecommunications technology historically been used for connectivity betweenand among people with shared interests (whether personal, professional, political, etcetera)?7. What are some of the implications of user expectations of free content, whether forcreators of content, copyright owners, vetting of content, quality of content, access tocontent, searching content, etc.? Do such considerations change depending on genre andmedium?

CLASS ACTIVITIES1. Locate a ‘how does it work’ video or website for a technology from the history of newmedia—using a search strategy such as ‘how does the telegraph work’—and then retell this inyour own words or make a storyboard for a video of your own.2. Choose an historical antecedent technology, such as the telegraph or the telephone, andtrace the linkages between that technology and present day new media. Consider economiclinkages, technological linkages, and sociocultural linkages (usage).3. Several examples of ‘prior art’ for everyday new media activities (abbreviations and textspeak found in telegrams, ‘twittering’ via the postal system) have been described in thischapter. Can you find examples of these from your own family, either memories of grandparentsor historical artifacts (old postcards, for example)?4. Locate a piece of very early ‘new media’ (the CBC Archives on the web are good for this)and review it in class. What is similar and what is different to new media today?Chapter 3: Approaches to New MediaQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. In what ways do different approaches to new media bring with them differentperspectives?2. What hype and counter-hype has accompanied the evolution and discussion of newmedia?3. What is meant by McLuhan’s phrase, ‘the medium is the message’? Why do you think ithas become so widely known?4. In what ways can the term ‘technoculture’ invite you to consider both technology andculture as multifaceted and complex?CHAPTER OUTLINEIn this chapter we examine the notion that a well-rounded view of the role and effects of newmedia in society can only be gleaned by taking a number of perspectives. The different viewspresented in this chapter are useful in different ways. For this reason, we look at severaltheoretical approaches to new media while providing insight into their strengths and weaknesses.Particular emphasis is placed on a ‘social shaping’ perspective in which groups and individualsare understood as able to influence how media is used and how it evolves. We explore some ofthe hype that surrounds new media and we try to understand why science-driven messages are socompelling, while critically examining both the overly positive and the unnecessarily negativeportrayals of the effects of new media. Both cultural context and media forms are explored asways of understanding new media, along with social, psychological, and economic explanations.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. What has been some of the hype about new media, in terms of the expectation that theyare able to change everything, typically for the better? What has some of the counter-hypebeen?2. In what ways can identifying the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to andperspectives on new media bring an understanding of how multiple perspectives/approachesare helpful and when one might, in some cases, be more appropriate or useful than another?3. What is meant by the term, ‘technological determinism’ and how is this different from a‘social shaping of technology’ approach?4. Discuss the three-level approach to technology and culture as presented in Table 3.2 andthe ways in which such an approach can inform your understanding of new media in societyand how people engage with new media (or less new media, for that matter).5. In Being Digital, Negroponte proclaimed that ‘like a force of nature, the digital age cannotbe denied or stopped and that it has four very powerful qualities that will result in its ultimatetriumph: decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing and empowering’. What is meant by thesefour qualities? What are your thoughts on the likening of the digital age to a force of naturethat cannot be stopped?6. Flanagan describes ‘a sense of individual empowerment achieved through enhancedagency’ derived from recent developments in new media (such as the way in which Web 2.0users are able to take control over their configuration, use, and re-use of the Internet).Consider both ‘empowerment’ and ‘agency’ in this context and discuss.7. In what ways does the work of Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams inform newmedia studies? Why is it useful to consider the differences between the two?8. Consider Mosco’s description of the ‘digital sublime’ and discuss how cyberspacepossesses not only technical, political, and economic properties, but also how it is a form ofcultural myth.9. What is meant by a ‘new empiricism’ for new media studies? What are some of thereasons such an approach has been called for?CLASS ACTIVITIES1. Marshall McLuhan’s tetrad of media effects (see case study, above) is a fun way to‘unpack’ a new media form. Divide into four groups with your fellow students—one each forobsolesce, retrieve, reverse, and enhance—and come up with an example and/or insight for aseries of new media forms. Mobile rich media cellphones, or smartphones, are a good examplewith which to start.

2. How do you see the Internet today? Discuss how your vision relates to the following quotefrom Marshall McLuhan (1962): ‘The next medium, whatever it is—it may be the extensionof consciousness—will include television as its content, not as its environment, and willtransform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communicationinstrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve theindividual’s encyclopaedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of asaleable kind.’Chapter 4: Mobile New MediaQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. In what ways can mobile devices be seen as evolving along the path of earliertechnological developments?2. How does the proliferation of mobile devices affect your personal, academic, and/orprofessional life?3. What are your thoughts on the debate about whether or not dependence on mobiledevices (and other new media technologies) has resulted in an unhealthy relationship to thesetechnologies (as suggested by the term, ‘crackberry’)?4. Are you aware of ways in which mobile phones and networks, like many telecommunicationundertakings, are seen as part of the national interest of a country, taking ona national character or receiving special treatment within a home country?CHAPTER OUTLINEMobile technologies, including but not limited to cell phones, are a vital and important partof new media today. In this chapter we explore the mobile phone and related technologies, suchas the tablet computer and netbook, from an historical, technological, and economic basis. Someof the key features of mobile phones are explained and examined with an eye to making thissometimes mysterious technology more accessible to the reader. We also look at how socialsoftware such as Facebook or Twitter is deployed on mobile devices, and the implications oflocation on these services. We examine, as well, some of the cultural impacts (for example onchildren) as well as social, health, and environmental issues, including surveillance implications.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. In what ways is path dependence evident in the development and social uses of mobiletechnologies?2. How did the cellular system present a solution to the capacity problem of earlier radioand telephone systems?

3. What capabilities give mobile phones or mobile general-purpose devices a key advantageover specific-purpose technologies?4. Several aspects of telecommunications policy are discussed in this chapter. What are theseand why are they significant?5. In what sense was the advent of short messaging service (SMS) an important turn in theevolution of mobile communication?6. What is the significance of the way(s) in which the operators of large Internet sites such asFacebook and Twitter seized the potential of adapting their services to the sending andreceiving of SMS, of reaching out to text message users, rather than asking users to reach outto the Internet?7. What are some of the favourable and unfavourable implications of the ‘always on’capability of mobile devices? In what ways are these becoming almost default characteristicsin personal and professional life, and what are the consequences?8. Mobile phone use is considered by some as part of a revolution in youth culture. Discusswhat this means and in what ways such changes are evident in varying degrees acrossgenerational (and/or other demographic) lines.9. This chapter notes that there are significant controversies related to health, theenvironment, and the social and cultural impacts of mobile technologies. Discuss these (andany others) and what could be done to address the concerns raised.CLASS ACTIVITIES1. In small groups with other students, take out your phone and trade it to the person besideyou. Take some time to reflect on, and share with the class, how you feel about givingsomeone else access to your phone. Discuss the implications of such a personal device.2. Explore the various price plans and services (minutes, texts, data, voicemail, features) bothfor the mobile device(s) you have and (perhaps) the one you wish you had. What sacrifices doyou make, if any, to afford this plan?3. Break into small groups and create a reenactment or skit that portrays the many thingsthat people do while they are using their mobile device (for example, consuming other media,eating dinner with family, visiting with friends, driving, etc.). Comment on the implications ofthis task switching or interruption.Chapter 5: Social Networks and Participatory CultureQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. What does it mean to live in a network society?

2. What kinds of issues and questions arise when considering participatory culture?3. In what ways are social capital and social media linked?CHAPTER OUTLINEThis is a chapter in two parts. In the first half of the chapter we consider the concept ofsocial networks and how these enable a culture of mass participation—a participatory culture.We also examine how these networks enable and enhance many other social processes. Althoughnetworks are not new phenomena, they are enhanced and extended by new media and weexplore this process in more detail. Networks are economic and political as well as socialphenomena. Given their importance, it is not surprising that new research methods have arisen.One of these, social network analysis, is considered in detail from both a practical and anhistorical point of view. We will also discuss social network theories, as well as some of thecriticism of these theories. In the second part of the chapter we look at social production and theparticipatory culture that has emerged in social networks, boosted by information andcommunications technology.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. What are the benefits of networked organizations as identified by Podolny and Page?What examples of these can you give in terms of your knowledge or experience withorganizations in your personal, academic, or professional life?2. Social network analysis is based on the understanding that forms of self, activity, andbehaviour are relational. Discuss the four key elements and seven core concepts of socialnetwork analysis identified by Wasserman and Faust.3. What is meant by the terms ‘social production’ and ‘participatory media culture’ and whyare these significant in terms of understanding new media? Discuss not only the promise butalso the peril of networks, social media, and participatory media culture.4. Within the different kinds of networks that are central to globalization there are cleardynamics of inclusion and exclusion, as well as a diverse range of oppositional movementsbased on resistance identities and project identities. Why is this significant and what are somepossible consequences?5. Aldridge and colleagues (2002) distinguish between three main types of social capital.Discuss these, identify examples of these in your own work and life, and consider theimplications for you (and others).CLASS ACTIVITIES1. Do a ‘degrees of separation’ experiment so see how many links connect you to yourclassmates, and from each of you to a famous person. Discuss how you use social media toenhance or take advantage of those links (e.g., Facebook Friends or LinkedIn connections).Discuss the use of social media for professional (rather than personal) use. What are thedifferences?

2. As a class, compile a list of how your group both consumes and produces ‘participatory’media (e.g., YouTube, Flickr, Facebook) using a show of hands or simple poll. Keep in mindthe following statistics—that the general population typically includes 90 per cent who onlyconsume, 9 per cent who contribute comments or stars or votes, and only one per cent whocontribute content.4 Compare your classes participation with participation more broadly.Chapter 6: Games: Technology, Culture, IndustryQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. In what ways are technology, industry, and the culture of games linked?2. What is the significance of marketing and branding practices, immersive play, andinteractive experiences in gaming?3. In what ways do the games industry and game culture have implications for issues such asidentity, the experience of childhood, and intellectual property?4. How do the values encoded into game cultures reflect offline cultural values? Conversely,how do games offer a chance to emphasize alternative or subjugated values in the name offantasy and play?CHAPTER OUTLINEThis chapter offers a rounded and broad examination of games, game play, and the gameindustry as a prime example of new media in the twenty-first century. We examine games as asignificant part of popular culture, extending beyond their notable economic impact. We alsolook at how the immersive nature and rapid pace of change places online and computer games atthe centre of debates relating to gender, cultural impact, childhood experiences, and intellectualproperty. We then consider how the performance of games has ramped up steadily over the pastseveral decades as game platforms compete for higher resolution, speed, and richer, moredemanding game play. We take a look at the economics of the game industry including itsdependence on subcontractors and its rather diffuse economic model—the need for smash ‘hits’to finance the many ‘misses’—followed by a consideration of the value chain and the tensionbetween the creative side of the business and the investment side, as well as the complexrelationship between production and distribution. The last part of the chapter looks at some ofthe most significant gaming developments in the first decade of the twenty-first century, such asthe role of producer-consumers ‘modding’ games, and the issues arising from that, including thequestion of who owns the subsequent content. The chapter concludes with a discussion of thepolitical economy of the game industry, as well as a section on the game industry in Canada.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. What are the different roles (and their corresponding communities of professionals) in thegames industry and what are some ways of describing the dynamics among them?

2. What are some of the shifts in the games industry described in this chapter?3. There is an ongoing debate about whether or not digital games cause violence. Discussboth the legitimate concerns and justifiable objections in this debate.4. What is meant by the term, ‘game culture’, and in what ways are people creatingcommunities around their game-playing activities, much as they have done around sports,hobbies, and other pastimes?5. This chapter draws attention to how the values encoded into game cultures reflect offlinecultural values but also how games offer a chance to emphasize alternative or subjugatedvalues in the name of fantasy and play. What are the implications of this and why are theysignificant?6. Discuss the concerns related to issues of identity and gender-bias and games, as they arerelated to: the representations offered to players (in the forms of avatars), how players identifywith or relate to their avatars, and the styles of play suggested and enabled by games.7. Why do you think that the following distinctive features of digital games have drawn theattention of the research community: social interaction within the game, the capacity ofplayers to become co-creators of content, and the relationship between the players and thegame text?CLASS ACTIVITIES1. Building on the notion of games in education (see the Whitton text, in Further Reading,above), create a game version of this course. How would points be awarded? Would theassignments be like ‘quests’ or ‘kills’, or something else? Do you think you would be moreengaged by this experience? Create a paper version of the game, or discuss the rules, andthen debate the expected outcome. You might take a look at the article from the Chronicle ofHigher Education on Lee Sheldon’s course in which the course itself is a game:http://chronicle.com/blogPost/At-Indiana-U-a-Class-Game/219812. Online games, such as ‘Second Life’, frequently provide a free trial account that can beused by anyone. Hold a class discussion inside the game, with fellow students either logging infrom their own laptops, from home, or from terminals at your school. Test the requirements(sometimes a game requires that software be downloaded, making it difficult to do on publiccomputers), and if necessary, adjust to a virtual tour or demonstration by students whoalready have accounts. Consider a virtual tour of a particular type of game (e.g., a children’sgame such as Club Penguin). See Case Study, above, for more on Club Penguin.Chapter 7: Creative IndustriesQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1. What has been the significance of creative cities, historically? How do cities today work toremain part of this tradition of creative industry?2. What are the creative industries? How can the dynamics of these industries becharacterized?3. In what ways are knowledge and information different from each other? Why is thisrelevant to understanding both the knowledge economy and creative industries?4. In what ways do policy initiatives undertaken in Canada and different parts of the worldaffect cultural industries?CHAPTER OUTLINEIn this chapter we consider the industrialization of creativity, something that was not initiatedby new digital media—mechanical reproduction of works of art famously preoccupied FrankfurtSchool member Walter Benjamin in the first half of the twentieth century—but the process hasaccelerated, broadened, and deepened with digital media. We begin with an examination of theconcept of creativity itself and especially the question of under what circumstances it canflourish. We next consider the notion of a creative industry and how and why this has become apolicy objective of cities, provinces and states, and countries around the world. The reasons forthe rise of a creative economy, creative cities, and the creative class both as realities and as visionsor ideals, are considered and debated.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. What are some examples of historic creative cities? In what ways were they (and are theystill) significant?2. What is meant by the concepts of ‘knowledge push’ and ‘market pull’? What relevance dothese have for cultural industries?3. What new modes of cultural production and consumption in urban centres among youngpeople (18–35 years old) are discussed in this chapter? Why is this shift significant?4. In what ways are ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ different from each other? Why is thisrelevant in understanding the knowledge economy and creative industries?5. What is the significance of the rise of the service industry sectors in the knowledge-basedeconomy and the ‘culturalization’ of the economy?6. What are the four models of the creative industries proposed by Cunningham and Potts?7. In this chapter, we noted Healy’s (2002: 101) caution against ‘using new economy jargonto give a bullish defence of the arts in economic terms’. Why is this significant?8. What is the ‘creative class’ as discussed in this chapter? In what ways has the concept beenchallenged?9. What are some of the creative industries policy initiatives undertaken in Canada? Howare these seen as affecting cultural industries?

CLASS ACTIVITIES1. Using the website for your city, locate and summarize the statement on cultural industries.Most large cities, and many smaller ones as well, have such a statement. If available,look for the local cultural industries website (e.g., Culture Montréal) or the ministry of culturefor the province (e.g., Ministry of Culture, Ontario). Divide into groups and identify thecultural policy in a selected city (see http://creativecity.ca for a number of useful resources,especially the ‘Making the Case’ series at www.creativecity.ca/making-the-case/index.html).Identify recent policy statements and consider them in light of the discussion of culture inthis chapter. What bias or approach is being taken on the sites you visit?2. In his March 2009 essay, ‘The Art of With’, (Available online atwww.charlesleadbeater.net/cms/xstandard/The%20Art%20of%20With%20PDF.pdf)Charles Leadbeater addresses the question of whether or not the Web is creating a moreopen, participative, and collaborative approach to culture. Read through the article and thenengage with your classmates in a debate on the proposition that ‘The web is creating a culturemore inclined to thinking, working, acting with providing an alternative to the dominantprinciple of To and For. The principle of with can apply to art and culture as much as work,politics and learning. It would draw on a very different tradition of the avant-garde, one thathas privileged participation and collaboration as the principles at the heart of modern artrather than shock and separation.’ Can you think of examples from your own lives? Can youimagine how a local cultural organization (gallery, museum, orchestra) might transform itselffor the ‘art of with’?Chapter 8: The Global Knowledge EconomyQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. What is meant by the term globalization? Why is it significant for new media?2. What is the knowledge economy? In what ways is it important for new media?3. Why is it important to understand the differences between information and knowledgewhen thinking about investments in research and education in a global knowledge economy?4. How are creativity and culture relevant to understanding new media as fundamental tothe knowledge economy?CHAPTER OUTLINENew media are a powerful force for globalization, as this chapter explores in detail. InChapter 2 we saw how the telegraph first provided an early version of global communication, butdigital media and networks have taken that effect to a new level. This chapter explains thecomplexity of globalization and reviews some of the main criticisms of these developments aspart of an overall knowledge economy. We examine both technological change and its role in the

economy as well as more practical matters such as e-commerce strategies and the role that newmedia play in ‘disintermediation’ in order to better understand the forces driving the globalknowledge economy. We look at the nature of digital goods and how they have disrupted manyindustries that formerly relied on the expense of reproducing and transporting ideas (news,music, movies, for example) and that now find themselves without that avenue for extractingvalue. In this context, we return to some of the themes on creativity from Chapter 7 and examinethe creative economy more closely from a business perspective, examining topics such astechnological innovation and the innovator’s dilemma.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. The term globalization is defined in this chapter in terms of a series of interrelatedprocesses. What are these processes and what evidence or examples of them can you identifyin your own living, working, or educational spheres?2. What is meant by the term ‘knowledge economy’? What are some of the features,processes, and dynamics involved?3. What is an e-commerce strategy, what are some of its benefits, and why is it important fornew media?4. This chapter describes the global knowledge economy as arising from the confluence ofthree developments. What are these and what are the dynamics that link them?5. This chapter presents both old and new paradigms of economic development. What arethe characteristics of each of these paradigms? Why are they significant to new mediastudies?6. What are the two examples of the innovator’s dilemma given in this chapter? What aresome real world examples of this dilemma?7. This chapter takes up some discussion of the difference between information andknowledge. For example, the notion that knowledge is embodied in persons and practices,whereas information is captured and stored in databases and is readily accessible andincreasingly reproducible through the Internet. What significance does this have forunderstanding the knowledge economy in terms of both creative and cultural aspects?CLASS ACTIVITIES1. As a class, attempt to discover the country of origin for the collected electronic andfashion items present in the room. Try to account for raw materials and multiple points oforigin for complex items with embedded components such as laptop computers. If you can,see how much—if anything—was ‘Made in Canada’. What do your conclusions suggest toyou about Canada’s role in a knowledge economy?2. Use the World Bank’s Knowledge Assessment Methodology tool (see Useful Websites,above) to compare Canada to a selected other country. How do we compare? What are ourstrong points and what are our weak points?

Chapter 9: Internet Law, Policy, and GovernanceQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. What are some examples of the domains covered by cyberspace law? What are thecomplications and issues specific to this type of law?2. How do policy initiatives or interventions taken by the Canadian government affect newmedia?3. Why is it important to consider the distinctions and balance between private ownershipand public use of intellectual property when thinking about new media?CHAPTER OUTLINEIn this chapter we examine the interesting and sometimes difficult issues that have arisen in aworld in which two of the foundational principals of law—property and the state—have beensignificantly altered by digital and global information flows. We look at some of the majordomains of law as they pertain to cyberspace and some of the legal implications that have arisenas that space has changed and expanded. That digital goods are ephemeral and easily crossborders is challenge enough but a further pressure comes from the fact that there is little if anycyberspace law at all currently—the internet is self-policing but only in a loose sense and mainlyat the level of technology standards. Beyond that, only national and local law can be applied—and that, as we will see, is oft-times very difficult to do. Nations have attempted to establishpriorities, programs, and policies designed to boost the power and role of their own citizens andcorporations in information and communication technologies—first with computers and thennetworks. Given the origins of the Internet in Western democracies such as the US, sometimesthe laissez-faire attitude adopted online is incompatible with local standards elsewhere around theglobe. We examine these issues along with implications for copyright and property rights, and theopen source software movement.DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. What are some of the domains covered by cyberspace law?2. What are some of the policy initiatives or interventions that the Canadian governmenthas taken in regard to new media? How are these important to understanding current newmedia policy in Canada?3. What are some of the recent developments in international copyright and intellectualproperty law? What critical questions arise from measures to extend copyright protection andto establish a legally binding global intellectual property regime?4. In what ways does the Internet, as it is situated in relation to existing laws and regulatoryframeworks, complicate efforts to establish binding legal guidelines?

5. Copyright law seeks to make distinctions between private ownership and public use,though these have often been difficult to sustain in practice. What three areas of distinctionhave been particularly contentious?6. In the case involving the US Communications Decency Act (1996), Mike Godwin,counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), argued (1998: 23): ‘Give people a modemand a computer and access to the Net, and it’s far more likely that they’ll do good thanotherwise’. How is this view characteristic of cyber-libertarian perspectives and why do youthink such views are not now articulated as strongly as they once were?7. Copyright law is derived from the principle of balanced interests. What are these interestsand in what ways have new media and the Internet brought challenges to maintaining suchbalance?CLASS ACTIVITIES1. Take a look at the CRTC web site (www.crtc.gc.ca), noting the recent decisions relating tonew media. Pick a recent decision that has general applicability (e.g., Net Neutrality, or ISPs ascarriers vs broadcasters) and consider how it fits with the concepts and analysis in thischapter. Does the approach of the commission or the tone of the decisions match with theviews of this text? Does it match your own views?2. Consider the implications of making Internet access either a human right or afundamental right of Canadians. Are these similar to the universal service provisions adoptedin Canada (and elsewhere) to ensure telephone service was made widely available outside ofurban areas? If you or any of your fellow students are from rural or remote areas in yourclass, speak about the challenges of getting Internet access at home.Chapter 10: ConclusionQUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1. What are some of the negative aspects of new media? What aspects of human relationsdoes it disrupt that we would not necessarily wish to have disrupted?2. How can new media be used to go beyond mere entertainment to affecting real change?How can new media—and social software in particular—be used professionally andresponsibly, rather than frivolously and hurtfully?