Keramidas – Citizenship in the Digital Age 1

Citizenship in the Digital Age

Prof. Kimon Keramidas

Fall 2018

Tuesdays 6:25-9pm

**PROVISIONAL SYLLABUS, ALL DETAILS DATES, TIMES, AND ASSIGNMENTS SUBJECT TO CHANGE**

In 2008 President Barack Obama rode a wave to the White House on what was claimed to be the most data-driven campaign ever. In 2016 inaccurate polling, email security, and social media trolling were in the headlines and led to an election result that reflected a new set of experiences for citizens in the digital age. This course will ask how new technologies, changes in our approaches to data, new forms of social communication, and dramatic changes in the way we get our news have fundamentally changed the experience of being a citizen. Students will be reading about the transition of old media to new and the change in journalistic practices and news consumption that have resulted. The course will delve deeply into the positives and negatives of social media on the experience of the public sphere and political discourse and look at the power of online spaces to enable organization and political protest. It will alsoclosely consider how maps and polls both reveal political structures and become filters by which the experience of being a citizen is delineated.

The course will accomplish these goals through readings and discussion, and also through a close integration of the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections into the readings and assignments. Students will research important mid-term elections and choose a particular race to follow. They will report back to the class on multiple occasions throughout the semester to the class, relatinghow the history, ideas and concepts we will be learning about in readings and discussion are playing out in the day-to-day studies of their election race. Students will also keep a journal of their personal experience of the news and noise that chatters throughout contemporary culture. They will report about the way they hear about political news and elections in their daily lives and reflect on how that chatter influences their view of the world in the digital age. These two separate assignments will ask students to study and reflect on citizenship and the electoral process from both a critical research perspective and as an individual within the machinations of the government and media.

To connect students more directly to the practices of digital media the class will include visits from experts in qualitative social media textual analysis, digital mapmaking and geographical information systems (GIS), and online activism and organizing. These sessions will help students to both better understand how these technologies and practices influence contemporary politics and to gain some tangible skills in utilizing these technologies and practices in their own research and writing.

Assignments

Weekly Posts, Readings and Participation (30%)

Participation in class discussion is of the utmost importance and students will be expected to engage with the readings and with their fellow classmates’ comments in class.

Every week you will be expected to link to an online news article or social media post you think is relevant to our ongoing discussions. You will post the title of the article with its link on that week’s syllabus page along with a 50+ word annotation of the article that summarizes it and provides a critical lens on its content. These postings will help us bring relevant articles that are in the news at that moment into our weekly discussion.

Election Race Tracking Project (50%)

The main assignment of this course will be to follow an election race leading up to election day November 6, 2018. These important midterm elections will determine whether leadership in the House and Senate remain in the hands of the Republicans and in some way will be a referendum on the presidency of Donald Trump. You will be following the election across as many media as possible, including social media, internet news sites, broadcast news, cable news, etc. In all of these assignments you will be tying our evolving conversation through reading and discussion into your individual research and tracking of the election race you have chosen.

Part 1 – Election Race Tracking Choice. This brief proposal will describe the election race you have selected, where it is, who is running, any major themes that are at the center of the debate for your race and a plan of how you intend to follow the race as it develops. This will be posted on the website. (600 words+) (5%)DUE SEPTEMBER 18

Part 2 – Mid-Campaign Review of Election Tracking. In the middle of the semester and a few weeks before the election you will compose a medium length post on the current state of your election race to be posted on the course web site. You will update us on any major developments, discuss specific news items that you thought were significant, and describe the overall tone of your race. You will also make a brief presentation in class of your work that will be part of your grade for this portion of the project.(900 words+ and presentation) (8%)DUE OCTOBER 16

Part 3 – Initial Election Response. This medium length post will be written immediately after the elections on November 6 and will be your initial response to how the election turned out the way it did, if there were any surprises, and how our readings and discussions influenced your insights on the development of the race and the actual results of the election.(1200 words+ and presentation) (12%)DUE NOVEMBER 13

Part 4 – Final Summary and Presentation. The final assignment for the election race tracking project is a comprehensive final summary of your experience tracking your race from the beginning of the semester through to the implications of the final results and aftermath. While previous portions of the assignment were more reflective and in the moment, this portion of the project should be considered as a full scholarly project based in the materials covered in the course, along with your own research into the social, cultural, and historical background of your chosen election. It should have a full bibliography and inline references to the readings from this semester. It should also include independent research adding new sources and references to news articles and media posts from your own research. You will also be giving a presentation on your semester’s work during our final meeting on December 18, and that presentation will figure in your final grade.

  • Presentation (5%)– DUE DECEMBER 18
  • Final Summary (3600+ words)(20%) – DUE DECEMBER 21

Personal Political Impact Journal (20%)

Every two weeks you will be making a 300+ word post to the course site as part of an ongoing journal throughout the semester. This journal will not be directly connected to your chosen election race, but rather will track your experiences as the semester passes. This will include interactions with your different communities online and in physical space, and a commentary that includes references to and is contextualized in relation to the readings in the class, the articles you have posted on a weekly basis and our discussion in class.

You will post immediately after the first class on September 4through November 27 and also post one final 600+ word post prior to our December 4 class for a total of eight posts. During the December 4 class, we will discuss how we each have felt digital media impact our own experiences of citizenship during the semester.

All final work to be completed by midnight December 21

Week-by-Week

September 4 – Introduction

September 11 – Theorizing Citizenship

September 18 – Before the Boom: Transitions and Predictions of the Early Digital Age–ELECTION TRACKING CHOICE MADE

September 25 – Old New Media in a Digital Age

October 2 – The Internet and Politics Growth/Expansion/Integration/Influence

October 9 – Social Media I – Expanded Connectivity – Guest Speaker Sarah DeMott – SOCIAL MEDIA SCRAPING WORKSHOP

October 16 –MID-CAMPAIGNREVIEW OF PROGRESS OF TRACKING PROJECT

October 23 –Social Media II – Surveillance and Algorithms

October30 – Polling and Maps – Guest Speaker Andrew Battista – MAPPING WORKSHOP

November 6 – GATHER TO WATCH COVERAGE OF MIDTERM ELECTIONS

November 13 – INITIAL ELECTION RESPONSE REVIEW SESSION

November 20 – Organizing Digitally and Online Protest – Guest Speaker Michael Mandiberg

November 27 – Representations of the Citizen in the Digital Age

December 4 – Discussion of Personal Journals

December 11 – No Class Meeting – Monday classes meet on Tuesday

December 18 – Semester Review and Presentations

All final work to be completed by midnight December 21

Course Policies

  • Attendance at and attentiveness in all class meetings is vital to this complex, process-oriented course. As your work through your projects you will both benefit from and be able to assist your classmates by taking part in conversations and discussions of work in progress. As such this contribution to class discussion is mandatory.
  • Excused absences are only allowed for special circumstances such as emergencies or illness. Please notify Prof. Keramidas in the event an excused absence is necessary. Unexcused absences and repeated lateness will affect your final grade
  • Plagiarism–the use of words, ideas, or arguments from another person or source without citation–is unacceptable in all circumstances and will be punished severely.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF READINGS & CLASS SCHEDULE

September 4 – Introduction

Introduction of class scope, syllabus and assignments.

September 11– Theorizing Citizenship

Readings

Oliver Escobar, “Pluralism and Democratic Participation: What Kind of Citizen Are Citizens Invited to Be?,” Contemporary Pragmatism 14, no. 4 (October 2017): 416–38,

Lauri Rapeli, The Conception of Citizen Knowledge in Democratic Theory (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014),

  • Introduction
  • Chap. 1: Democratic Thory and Political Knowledge
  • Chap. 2: The Empirical Study of Political Knowledge
  • Chap. 3: Linking Together Theory and Practice: A Framework for Evaluating Political Knowledge

Dennis F. Thompson, The Democratic Citizen: Social Science and Democratic Theory in the Twentieth Century (London: Cambridge U.P., 1970).

  • Introduction
  • Part 1: Presuppositions
  • Part 2: Schema
  • Part 3: Participation
  • Part 5: Voting

September 18– Before the Boom: Global Transitions and Predictions of the Early Digital Age

Readings

Manuel Castells,The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed., (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

  • Prologue: the Net and the Self
  • Chap. 1: The Information Technology Revolution
  • Chap 2: The New Economy: Informationalism, Globalization, Networking,”

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).

  • Part 1: The Political Constitution of the Present
  • Part 3.4: Postmodernization, or The Informatization of Production
  • Part 3.5: Mixed Constitution
  • Part 3.6: Capitalist Sovereignty, or Administering the Global Society of Control
  • Part 4.1: Virtualities

Clay Shirky “Chaps 2-7” inHere Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (New York: Penguin Press, 2008).

September 25 – Old New Media in a Digital Age

Readings

Pablo J. Boczkowski, “Chaps. 1-4” Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers (Cambridge, UNITED STATES: MIT Press, 2005).

Natalie Fenton, ed., New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age (SAGE Publications, 2010).

  • Part I: Introdution: New Media and Democracy
  • Part II: New Media and News in Context
  • Part III: New Media and News in Practice

James Stanyer “Web 2.0 and the Transformation of News and Journalism,” in Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard, eds., Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (Taylor & Francis, 2010).

Assignment

Election Tracking Choice Made

October 2 – The Internet and Politics – Growth/Expansion/Integration/Influence

Readings

In Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard, eds., Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (Taylor & Francis, 2010).

  • Richard Davis, Jody C Baumgartner, Peter L. Francia, and Jonathan S. Morris “The Internet in U.S. Election Campaigns”
  • Nick Anstead, Andrew Chadwick “Parties, Election Campaigning, and the Internet: Toward a Comparative Institutional Approach”
  • Greg Elmer “Exclusionary Rules? The Politics of Protocols”

Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004).

Pew Research Materials

Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie, “The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, October 19, 2017, (All eight sections and review complete Pew report here::

John B. Horrigan “How People Approach Facts and Information,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech (blog), September 11, 2017. (All seven sections and review complete Pew report here:

October 9 – Social Media I – Expanded Connectivity

  • Guest Speaker Sarah DeMott –SOCIAL MEDIA SCRAPING WORKSHOP

Readings

John Allen Hendricks and Jerry K. Frye, “Social Media and the Millennial Generation in the 2010 Midterm Election,” in Noor, Al-Deen, Hana S., and John Allen Hendricks. Social Media: Usage and Impact (Lexington Books, 2011.)

In Michael Mandiberg, ed., The Social Media Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2012).

  • Jay Rosen, “The People Formerly Known as the Audience”
  • Danah Boyd, “Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle”
  • C.W. Anderson, “From Indymedia to Demand Media”

Rebecca S. Robinson and Mary Jane C. Parmentier, “The Arab Spring in North Africa: Still Winter in Morocco?,” in Online Collective Action: Dynamics of the Crowd in Social Media, ed. Nitin Agarwal, Merlyna Lim, and Rolf T. Wigand (Vienna: Springer Vienna, 2014), 197–211,

Pew Research Materials

Shannon Greenwood, Andrew Perrin, and Maeve Duggan, “Social Media Update 2016,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech (blog), November 11, 2016,

Maeve Duggan and Aaron Smith, “The Political Environment on Social Media,” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech (blog), October 25, 2016,

October 16 –MID-SEMESTER REVIEW OF PROGRESS OF ELECTION TRACKING PROJECT

  • Presentations of work on Election Race Tracking to this point.
  • Post due 24 hours before class meeting, as each student will also be assigned another student’s work to respond to and comment on.

October 23 – Social Media II – Surveillance, Freedom, Algorithms, and User Commodification

Readings

Juliet E. Carlisle and Robert C. Patton, “Is Social Media Changing How We Understand Political Engagement? An Analysis of Facebook and the 2008 Presidential Election,” Political Research Quarterly 66, no. 4 (2013): 883–95.

Ronald J. Deibert“The Geopolitics of Internet Control: Censorship, Sovereignty, and Cyberspace” in Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard, eds., Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (Taylor & Francis, 2010).

Robert Imre and Stephen Owen, “Twitter-ised Revolution: Extending the Governance Empire,” in S. Bebawi and D. Bossio, eds., Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The “Arab Spring” (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014).

Dal Yong Jin and Andrew Feenberg, “Commodity and Community in Social Networking: Marx and the Monetization of User-Generated Content,” Information Society 31, no. 1 (February 1, 2015): 52–60,

Newton Lee, “Part II Privacy in the Age of Big Data,” in Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (New York, NY, UNITED STATES: Springer, 2012).

October 30– Polling and Maps

  • Guest Speaker Andrew Battista – MAPPING WORKSHOP

Readings

In Marita Carballo and Ulf Hjelmar, Public Opinion Polling in a Globalized World (Berlin: Springer, 2008).

  • Tony Cowling, “The Effects of Globalisation on the Perception of Democracy”
  • Richard Hilmer, “Exit Polls — A Lot More than Just a Tool for Election Forecasts”
  • Daniel Merkle, Gary Langer, David Lambert, “Methodological Issues in Pre-Election Polling: Lessons from ABC News’ 32-Night Tracking Poll”

In Kirby Goidel, ed., Political Polling in the Digital Age : The Challenge of Measuring and Understanding Public Opinion. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011).

  • Charlie Cook, “Introduction: The Meaning and Measure of Public Opinion
  • Kirby Goidel, “Chap. 1: Public Opinion Polling in a Digital Age: Meaning and Measurement”
  • Scott Keeter, “Chap. 2: Public Opinion Polling and Its Problems”
  • Mark Blumenthal, “Chap. 3: Can I Trust This Poll?”
  • Johanna Dunaway, “Chap. 4: Poll-Centered News Coverage: Causes and Consequences”

Christopher Ingraham, “This Is the Best Explanation of Gerrymandering You Will Ever See,” Washington Post, March 1, 2015, sec. Wonkblog,

Anthony J. McGann et al., “Chap. 1: The Unnoticed Revolution” “Chap. 2: The Jurisprudence of Districting” “Chap. 3: Measuring Partisan Bias” “Conclusion: Vieth, Majority Rule, and One Person, One Vote” in Gerrymandering in America: The House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Popular Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 2016),

Sites

  • Polling
  • FiveThirtyEight -
  • Gallup -
  • Monmouth University Polling Institute -
  • Pew Research U.S Politics & Policy -
  • Washington Post Poll Archive -
  • Maps
  • Political Maps.org -
  • Gerrymander the Game -

November 6 – GATHER TO WATCH COVERAGE OF MIDTERM ELECTIONS

  • During class period we will be “watching” election results unfold across a number of media. We will watch network and cable news, follow trending social media, record data at different points of the evening based on reporting precincts, track predictions on different sites. From these varied perspectives of following the voting unfold, each student will be assigned an individual task which they will be responsible for during the watching session (i.e. following Fox News, tracking Twitter hastags). Before the end of the evening (and most likely before all races have been decided) we will pause to discuss how the races have been delivered through different media and how the concentration of digitally driven media changes on election day.

November 13 – INITIAL ELECTION RESPONSE REVIEW SESSION

  • Presentations of work on Election Race Tracking to this point including initial response to the results of chosen elections.
  • Post due 24 hours before class meeting, as each student will also be assigned another student’s work to respond to and comment on.

November 20 – Organizing Digitally and Online Protest

  • Guest Speaker – Michael Mandiberg
  • Connected to this class will be an activism outing we choose at the beginning of the semester

Readings

W. Lance Bennett, AmoshaunToft “Identity, Technology, and Narratives: Transnational Activism and Social Networks,” in Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard, eds., Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (Taylor & Francis, 2010).