Introduction to Digital Media

Schedule of Readings for the Spring 2014 Semester

Dr. Jelena Karanovic
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Media, Culture and Communication
New York University

Week 1: What do we mean by digital media?

  • Lev Manovich. 2001. What is New Media? In The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Ginsburg, Faye. 2008. Rethinking the Digital Age. In The Media and Social Theory, 127-144. David Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee, eds. New York: Routledge.

Week 2: Novelty and obsolescence of digital media

Session 1

  • Bolter, David, and Richard Grusin. 1999. Introduction and Chapter 1. In Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Recommended: Cohen, Kris. 2005. “What Does the Photoblog Want?” Media, Culture & Society 27 (6): 883 -901.

Session 2

  • Sterne, Jonathan. 2007. “Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media.” In Residual Media. Charles Acland, ed. pp. 16-31.
  • Parks, Lisa. 2004. “Kinetic Screens: Epistemologies of Movement at the Interface.” In MediaSpace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age, ed. Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy. London: Routledge. pp. 37-57.
  • YesLab and MolleIndustria. 2011. “Phone Story.” http://yeslab.org/project/phone-story
  • Small Team Presentation: Zhao, Michael. 2009. “eDump.” http://michaelzhao.net/eDump/

Week 3: Digital media and social change

Session 1

  • Edwards, Paul. 1996. “Why Build Computers?: The Military Role in Computer Research.” In The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 43-73.

Session 2

  • Light, Jennifer. 1999. “When Computers Were Women.” Technology and Culture 40: 455-483.
  • Turner, Fred. 2006. “How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology: Lessons from the First Hacker’s Conference.” In Critical Cyberculture Studies. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari, eds. New York: NYU Press. pp. 257-269.
  • Recommended: Abbate, Janet. 2012. Recoding Gender: Women’s Changing Participation in Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Recommended: Goldsmith, Jack L., and Tim Wu. 2006. Preface and Introduction. In Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of Borderless World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Week 4: The politics of data, databases and algorithms

Session 1

Session 2

  • Raley, Rita. 2013. “Dataveillance and Countervailance.” In “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron, edited by Lisa Gitelman, 121–145. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 121-145.
  • Brunton, Finn, and Helen Nissenbaum. 2011. “Vernacular Resistance to Data Collection and Analysis: A Political Theory of Obfuscation.” First Monday 16 (5). http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3493/2955
  • Small team presentation: “What They Know,” http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk/

Week 5: Network

Session 1

Session 2

  • Benkler, Yochai, and Helen Nissenbaum. 2006. “Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (4): 394–419.
  • Burgess, Jean. 2008. “All Your Chocolate Rain Are Belong to Us”? In Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, ed. Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. pp. 101-109. http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/files/2008/10/vv_reader_small.pdf
  • Recommended: Albert-László Barabási. 2002. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

Week 6: Networked intimacy

Session 1

  • Madianou, Mirca, and Daniel Miller. 2011. “Mobile phone parenting: Reconfiguring relationships between Filipina migrant mothers and their left-behind children.” New Media & Society 13 (3): 457-470.

Session 2

  • Gershon, Ilana. 2010. “Breaking Up in a Public.” In The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 165-196.
  • Thompson, Clive. 2008. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. The New York Times, September 7, 2008.

Week 7: Networked activism

Session 1

  • Shirky, Clay. 2008. “It Takes a Village to Find a Phone.” In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin. pp. 1-25.
  • Downey, Tom. 2010. “China’s Cyberposse.” The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine

Session 2

  • Tufekci, Zeynep, and Christopher Wilson. 2012. “Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square.” Journal of Communication 62 (2): 363–379.
  • Coleman, Gabriella. 2011. “Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action.” The New Everyday: A Media Commons Project. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/pieces/anonymous-lulz-collective-action
  • Recommended: Scholz, Trebor. 2008. Where the Activism Is. In Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, ed. Megan Boler. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. pp. 355-365.
  • Recommended: MacKinnon, Rebecca. 2012. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. New York: Basic Books.

Week 8: Networked journalism

Session 1

  • In-class screening: Sloan, Robin, and Matt Thompson. 2007. “EPIC 2015.”
  • Anderson, C. W. 2012. “From Indymedia to Demand Media: Journalism’s Vision of Its Audience and the Horizons of Democracy.” In The Social Media Reader. Ed. Michael Mandiberg. New York: NYU Press. pp. 77–96. NOTE: Read especially pp. 77-89.
  • Widdicombe, Lizzie. 2013. “From Mars: A Young Man’s Adventures in Women’s Publishing.” The New Yorker, 23 Sept. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/09/23/130923fa_fact_widdicombe

Session 2

Week 9: Redefining ownership

Session 1

Session 2

  • In-class screening: “Grand Theft Auto IV – The Trashmaster: Fan-Made Movie.” 2008. Clips.
  • Paley, Nina. 2009. “Frequently Asked Questions,” http://www.sitasingstheblues.com
  • Rodman, Gilbert, and Cheyanne Vanderdonckt. 2006. “Music for Nothing or, I Want My MP3: The Regulation and Recirculation of Affect.” Cultural Studies 20 (2): 245-261.
  • Recommended: Glass, Ira. 2013. “When Patents Attack… Part Two!” This American Life. WBEZ, 31 May 2013. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/496/when-patents-attack-part-two
  • Recommended: Aufderheide, Patricia, and Peter Jaszi. 2004. Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers. Washington, D.C.: Final Report to Center for Social Media.
  • Recommended: Morfoot, Leigh and Jason. 2010. “Citizen 3.0: Copyright, Creativity and Contemporary Culture.” http://www.kinobserver.com
  • Recommended: Cumberland, Sharon. “Private Uses of Cyberspace: Women, Desire, and Fan Culture.” MIT Communications Forum. http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/cumberland.html
  • Recommended: Benjamin, Walter. 1968 (1936). “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Week 10: Digital labor

Session 1

  • Xiang, Biao. 2005. Gender, Dowry and the Migration System of Indian Information Technology Professionals. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 12: 357-380.
  • Small team presentation: “Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.” https://www.mturk.com/mturk/

Session 2

Week 11: Remaking identities

Session 1

  • In-class film screening: Matulick, Shelley. 2006. “Our Brilliant Second Life.” http://vimeo.com/8610970
  • Kendall, Lori. 2002. Hanging Out in the Virtual Locker Room: BlueSky as a Masculine Space. In Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press. pp. 71-108.

Session 2

  • Nakamura, Lisa. 2013. “‘It’s a Nigger in Here! Kill the Nigger!’ User-Generated Media Campaigns Against Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Digital Games.” In Media Studies Futures, eds. Kelly Gates and Anghy Valdivia. New York: Blackwell. pp. 1-15.
  • Small team presentation: Sarkeesian, Anita. 2013. “Tropes vs Women in Video Games.” http://www.feministfrequency.com/

Week 12: Technologies of personhood

Session 1

  • Malaby, Thomas. 2009. “1_The Product: Second Life, Capital, and the Possibility of Failure in a Virtual World.” In Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 17-45.

Session 2

Weeks 13 and 14: Student conference