295 W20 Ehrentraut

295

Department of English Language and Literature - University of Waterloo

ENGL295: Social Media (Section 002)

Mon/Wed: 1:00-2:20pm SJ2 2007

Instructor: Dr. Judy Ehrentraut

Email: jehrentr@uwaterloo.ca

Office: PAS 1064

Office Hour: Wed 3:00-4:00pm

Course Description:

This course provides an introduction to the growing field of social media studies. We will engage with central conversations and debates in social media theory to examine topics such as memes, social networks, fan communities and texts, digital identity, and other emergent social media forms. By the end of the course, students will comprehend theoretical, critical and popular discourses concerning social media and be able to further engage with their own social media and wider Internet usage.

Course Evaluation

Attendance and Participation: 30%

Tumblr Blog Responses (200-300 words): 15% (3x5%) Various due dates

Midterm Paper: 25% Due March 1st

Creative Group Project: 20% Presentations in class April 1st

• Group Project Reflection: 10% Due April 1st

Required Texts

All course readings are either available via links as indicated, or are posted on LEARN as PDFs.

Readings posted on LEARN are alphabetically labeled by author and section titles.

Schedule

This syllabus is subject to change at the instructor’s discretion, as needed.

Week 1: Introduction to Social Media

January 6th

• First day of class: Introduction and syllabus review

January 8th

• boyd, dana. “Social Media: A Phenomenon to Be Analyzed.” Social Media + Society 1(1) 2015. 1-2. (LEARN)
• Humphreys, Ashlee. “New Concepts in Social Media.” Social Media: Enduring Principles. Oxford University Press, 2016. 17-19. (LEARN)

Week 2: Communicating Socially

January 13th

• Humphreys, Ashlee. “The Communication Model.” Social Media: Enduring Principles. Oxford University Press, 2016. 7-17. (LEARN)

January 15th

• Baym, Nancy K. “Seven Key Concepts.” Personal Connections in the Digital Age. 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2015. 6-12. (LEARN)
• Humphreys, Ashlee. “Message Types.” Social Media: Enduring Principles. Oxford University Press, 2016. 23-31. (LEARN)

Week 3: Social Media Infrastructures

January 20th

• Baym, Nancy K. “Digital Media.” Personal Connections in the Digital Age. 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2015. 13-21. (LEARN)
• Humphreys, Ashlee. “Forms and Genres of Social Media.” Social Media: Enduring Principles. Oxford University Press, 2016. 31-38. (LEARN)

January 22nd

• “First Impressions: The Printing Press” BBC. 2017. (podcast)                                                                                                                      

Week 4: Participatory Culture

January 27th

• Jenkins, Henry, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, Margaret Weigel. “The Needed Skills in the New Media Culture.” Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur, 2006. 5-17. (LEARN)

January 29th

• Watch: Henry Jenkins TEDxNYED 2010. (Youtube)
• Jenkins, Henry, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, Margaret Weigel. “What Should We Teach? Rethinking Literacy.” Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur, 2006. 19-21. (LEARN)

Week 5: Meme Culture

February 3rd

• Shifman, Limor. “When Memes Go Digital.” Memes in Digital Culture. MIT Press, 2014. 17-35. (LEARN)

• Shifman, Limor. "Meme Genres". Memes in Digital Culture. MIT Press, 2014. 99-118. (LEARN)

Week 6: Online Selfhood

February 10th

• Watch: “We Are Data.” C-Span. 2017. (The author starts at the 5:00 mark)

February 12th

• Affsprung, Daniel. “Narrative Identity and the Data Self.” Cyborgology. 2017.
• Thompson, Derek. "Be Your Selves." The Economist. 2017.

Week 7: Reading Week

February 17th/19th            No class

Week 8: Mobile Telephony

February 24th

• Watch: History of Cell Phones 2017. (Youtube)
• Fischer, Claude S. “The Telephone in America.” America Calling. University of California Press, 1992. 33-50. (LEARN)

February 26th

• Kopomaa, Timo. “Mobile Phones, Place-centred Communication and Neo-community.” Interface, 2002. 241-244. (LEARN)\
• Gergen, Kenneth. “Cell Phone Technology and the Challenge of Absent Presence.” 2002. (LEARN)

Week 9: The Attention Economy

March 2nd

• Turkle, Sherry. “Stop Googling: Let’s Talk.” The New York Times. 2015.
• Jurgenson, Nathan. “The Disconnectionists.” The New Inquiry. 2013.

March 4th

• Andrew-Gee, Eric. “Your Smartphone Is Making You Stupid, Antisocial And Unhealthy. So Why Can’t You Put It Down?” The Globe and Mail. 2018.

Week 10: Digital Dualism and Abstinence

March 9th

• Harris, Tristan. “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist.” Medium. 2016.
• Edelman, Joe. “Can software be good for us?” Medium. 2018.

March 11th

• Lanier, Jaron. "The BUMMER machine." Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt, 2018. (LEARN)

Week 11: Activism and the Filter Bubble

March 16th

• Watch: Algorithms and filters: The filter is the message (TEDtalk) 2011.

March 18th

• Gladwell, Malcolm. “Small Change.” The New Yorker. 2011.
• Mirani, Leo. "Sorry, Malcolm Gladwell, The Revolution May Well Be Tweeted.” The Guardian. 2010.

Week 12: Managing Privacy

March 23rd

• boyd, dana and Alice E. Marwick. "Networked Privacy: How Teenagers Negotiate Context in Social Media." New Media & Society 16.7 (2014): 1051-1064. (LEARN)

March 25th

• Watch: The Great Hack (Available on Netflix)
• Tufecki, Zeynep. “Zuckerberg’s So-Called Shift Toward Privacy.” The New York Times. 2019.

Week 13:

March 30th

• Course review and group work

April 1st

• Group Presentations

Detailed Course Breakdown

Attendance and Participation: 30%

Attendance and participation make up a large portion of your grade to insure that we have engaging discussions during each class. In my experience, English courses are the most successful when students are actively engaged and asking questions, rather than just letting the instructor do all the talking.

Participation is encouraged and will be rewarded, so students must come to class having done the readings for that day. Every Saturday, I will post a list of prompts on LEARN, which are meant to help fuel discussion for the readings. Each class will be a combination of my lecturing and an informal discussion about the prompts. To be prepared, read the assigned text prior to class, bring the text to class, and be ready to discuss it as a group. Those who are less comfortable speaking in class and are concerned about this component of the grade are free to send me an email answering each of the discussion prompts prior to class. This will count towards participation.

I will take attendance every class, and it’s important to show up even if you aren’t comfortable speaking aloud, as we will delve deeply into the readings and also discuss assignments and expectations. Students who miss more than 3 classes without any documentation will automatically lose their entire participation grade. Students who miss more than that risk failing the course.

Tumblr Blog Responses (200-300 words each): 15% (3x5%)

Each student will create a Tumblr account and complete 3 blog responses over the course of the semester. Each post should reflect on one reading, and must be submitted before the start of that class. In other words, students cannot submit the response after we cover that material in class. Please email me your username before posting your first blog or I will not be able to view it.

In keeping with the aesthetics and affordances of Tumblr, blog responses may contain links, images, videos, and other multimedia, but must consist primarily of 200-300 words of the student’s own writing. Relevant re-blogging and commentary on other Tumblr content is permitted in addition to this. All 3 blog entries must be completed by March 25th, and only one blog post per week is permitted.

Midterm Paper (6-8 pages): 25% Due March 1st

This paper will involve the selection of one “object-to-think-with” that students will use to write a strong argumentative essay. This object can be a variety of things, such as social media platform, a game, a technological device, an app, etc. Students must support their argument using at least 3 sources, which include one assigned reading, and at least 2 external readings.

The essay must be in MLA format, with a Reference list at the end. Refer to this guide for instructions on how to use MLA formatting for essays and for proper referencing. http://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/mla-format/

Creative Group Project (20%): Presentations April 1st

In groups of 3-4, students will prepare a creative project. Students are encouraged to interpret this project broadly. Make a podcast, a video essay, a dramatic performance, a game (digital or board), a disruptive social media account, a critical maker project—be creative. The project should engage with key topics and ideas, and involve at least 2 assigned readings. Student groups will be expected to consult with the professor well before the due date to ensure appropriate criteria are met for their project.

Group Project Reflection (10%) Due April 1st

Each group member will be responsible for preparing a 1-2 page reflection on their contribution to their group’s project. These reflections are informal but must be unique. In other words, though some redundancy will be expected, students should work on these independently.

Course Policies and Other Information

Late Policy:

My late policy is simple: if your assignment is 1 day late, I will deduct 3%. On the second day and every day after that, including weekends, I will deduct 5%. This is so that you can take one extra day to make sure you are satisfied and totally finished with your work, without losing too much of your grade. This policy is in place for students that need a bit of extra time to improve already existing work, or if something unexpected has happened, but is less forgiving for students who procrastinate or hand in work very late.

Extensions:

Students who require extensions must email me at least 24 hours before the due date, and must provide a legitimate reason for the extension request. I will NOT grant extensions without some kind of documentation that demonstrates a medical or family emergency. Students who regularly require extra time for assignments should register with Accessibility Services at the beginning of term, but must still request extensions from me.

Electronic Devices:

Since this is a social media course, students are highly encouraged to bring devices to class. However, students who abuse this privilege by using their devices in ways that are unrelated to the weekly topic will be docked participation marks. Please be respectful to your peers, as web browsing and other online activities can be distracting to people sitting near you.

Contacting the Instructor

I encourage students to contact me with any questions about the course via e-mail. Anyone who would like to receive more thorough feedback should come to my office and speak with me in person during my office hour, or by appointment. I will answer short e-mails and check my messages regularly, but always assume it will take at least 24 hours for me to respond, so plan accordingly.

Academic Integrity

The Faculty of Arts requires that I make you aware of the following: “Students are expected to know what constitutes academic integrity, to avoid committing academic offences, and to take responsibility for their actions. Students who are unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who need help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about ‘rules’ for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course professor, academic advisor, or the Undergraduate Assistant Dean.