The rise of the Internet challenges both the traditional theories of communication media and their relation to society, and the conventional methods for conducting research to examine such theories. This course will introduce graduate students to the prominent concerns regarding the Internet as a social artifact, and will work through some qualitative methods for tackling these concerns. This will include how to develop sufficient expertise in and analytical insights into: the technical dimensions of the Internet; the sociopolitical arrangements that helped produce it; the legislation and jurisprudence that have sought to regulate it; the practices that have developed around it; and the social, cultural, and ethical debates that have shaped it as a medium. We will grapple with the implications of bringing traditional communication research methods into the online environment, but will also expand that question to consider how and why to study the Internet in its social context.

Expectations

The most important assignment is to read all of the materials thoroughly; I expect everyone to participate fully in conversation in class, and this can only work if you have really given the readings your full attention. Since the purpose of this course is to orient ourselves towards actively investigating the Internet and its current sociopolitical controversies using the tools of qualitative research, we want to get into the habit of thinking in terms of investigative possibilities. For each class meeting, you will write up and hand in a half-page idea for a research project that you think could address or benefit from the issues and methodologies being dealt with in that week's class. During the semester, you will develop one of those proposals into a "mini-research project" and conduct that research; during the final class meeting, you will present your research goals, methodological tactics, and preliminary findings to the class for comment. The final version of this pilot research will be due by the end of the semester in the form of a 15-20 page paper. Your grade will be based on this paper, along with the quality of your presentation and class participation.

Materials

There is one book you should purchase, from the online vendor of your choice:

      Hine, Christine (2000) Virtual Ethnography (London: Sage Publications)

A copy of the book will also be on reserve at Mann Library. As indicated on the syllabus, the rest of the readings are either (1) online, (2) available through the library catalog as journal articles or e-books, or (3) posted in online course reserve. In two cases the articles are in a SECURE SITE online; I will give out the name and password in class.

Sept 1. introduction // the question of researcher objectivity

RESERVES: Gergen, Kenneth (1994) "The Mechanical Self and the Rhetoric of Objectivity" in Allan Megill, ed. Rethinking objectivity: 265-288.

Sept 8. history // the pitfalls of historical analysis

E-BOOK: Abbate, Janet (1999) "White Heat and Cold War: The Origins and Meanings of Packet Switching" Chapter 1 of Inventing the Internet: 7-42.

E-BOOK: Ceruzzi, Paul (1998) "Workstations, UNIX, and the Net" Chapter 9 of The History of Modern Computing: 281-306.

RESERVES: Hafner, Katie, and Matthew Lyon (1996) "E-Mail" Chapter 7 of Where Wizards Stay Up Late: 187--218.

- - -

RESERVES: Jordanova, Ludmilla (2000) "The Status of Historical Knowledge" Chapter 4 of History in Practice: 91-114.

Edwards, Paul (2001) "Making History: New Directions in Computer Historiography." IEEE Annals of the History of Computing v23n1: 85-87.

Sept 15. material design // achieving technical expertise sufficient for sociological analysis

Cerf, Vint and Robert Khan (1974) "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication." IEEE Transactions on Communications v22n5: 637-48.

Saltzer, Jerome, David Reed, and David Clark (1984) "End-to-End Arguments in System Design" ACM Transactions on Computer Systems v2n4: 277-88.

Lessig, Lawrence (2002) "A Threat to Innovation on the Web." Financial Times December 12.

Sandvig, Christian (2003) "Shaping Infrastructure and Innovation on the Internet: The End-to-End Network that Isn't" in D. Guston & D. Sarewitz (eds.), Shaping Science and Technology Policy: The Next Generation of Research

- - -

SECURE WEB LINK: Collins, Harry (2004) "Interactional Expertise as a Third Kind of Knowledge"Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (forthcoming)
      read pp. 1-10

Sept 22. NO CLASS

Sept 29. Net usage and the digital divide // merging qualitative and quantitative approaches

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) "Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the 'Have-Nots in Rural and Urban America" (July 1995)

Pew "Internet & American Life" project, "The Ever-Shifting Internet Population" (April 2003)

SECURE WEB LINK: Selwyn, Neil (2004) "Reconsidering Political and Popular Understandings of the Digital Divide" New Media and Society v6n3

RESERVES: Wyatt, Sally (2003) "Non-Users Also Matter: The Construction of Users and Non-Users of the Internet" in Trevor Pinch and Nelly Oudshoorn, eds., How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology: 67-79.

- - -

RESERVES: Jensen, Klaus Bruhn (2002) "The Complementarity of Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies in Media and Communication Research" Chapter 15 of A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: 254-272.

Oct 6. talk: John Palfrey, "The Digital Media Crisis"

Oct 13. virtual community // ethnography

Rheingold, Howard, "The Heart of the WELL" Chapter 1 of Virtual Community

Fernback, Jan and Brad Thompson, "Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure?"

Dibbell, Julian (1993) "A Rape in Cyberspace" Village Voice, December 23.

Wellman, Barry and Milena Gulia (1999) "Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities" in Peter Kollock and Marc Smith, eds. Communities in Cyberspace

- - -

RESERVES: Hess, David (1992) "The New Ethnography and the Anthropology of Science and Technology." Knowledge and Society v9: 1-26.

JOURNAL: Lindlof, Thomas and Milton Shatzer (1998) Media Ethnography in Virtual Space: Strategies, Limits, and Possibilities" Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 42 (2): 170-189.

- - -

Hine, Christine (2000) Virtual Ethnography, Chapter 1.

Oct 20. virtual community // ethnography

Hine, Christine (2000) Virtual Ethnography, Chapters 2-6.

Oct 27. politics // comparing old and new media

Katz, Jon (1997) "The Digital Citizen" Wired 5.12

JOURNAL: Barber, Benjamin R."The New Telecommunications Technology: Endless Frontier or the End of Democracy?" Constellations v4n2, pp. 208-228.

RESERVES: van Dijk, Jan (2000)"Models of Democracy and Concepts of Communication" in Kenneth Hacker and J. van Dijk, eds. Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice: 30-53.

Wolf, Gary (2004) "How the Internet Invented Howard Dean" Wired 12.01

explore:
      http://www.georgewbush.com/
      http://www.johnkerry.com/

- - -

Pew "People and the Press" project, "Cable and Internet Loom Large in Fragmented Political News Universe: Perceptions of Partisan Bias Seen as Growing, Especially by Democrats" (January 2004)

Nov 3. journalism // genre analysis

JOURNAL: Tumber, Howard (2001) "Democracy in the Information Age: The Role of the Fourth Estate in cyberspace" Information, Communication & Society v4n1: 95­112.

Deuze, Mark (2003) "The Web and its Journalisms: Considering the Consequences of Different Types of Newsmedia Online." New Media & Society v5n2: 203-230.

RESERVES: Boczkowski, Pablo (2004) "Mimetic Originality: The New York Times on the Web's Technology Section" Chapter 4 of Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers: 73-104.

Welch, Matt (2003) "Emerging Alternatives: Blogworld" Columbia Journalism Review v5

- - -

Miller, Carolyn and Dawn Shepherd (2004) "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog" in Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, Jessica Rayman, eds. Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs.

Nov 10. privacy // research ethics for the Net

McCandlish, Stanton (2002) "EFF's Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy" v 2.0

Nissenbaum, Helen (1998) "Protecting Privacy in an Information Age: The Problem of Privacy in Public" Law and Philosophy v17, 559-596.

Agre, Phil (1999) "The Architecture of Identity: Embedding Privacy in Market Institutions" Information, Communication and Society v2n1, 1-25.

- - -

Ess, Charles (2002) "Internet Research Ethics: An Introduction"

Walther, Joseph (2002) "Research Ethics in Internet-Enabled Research: Human Subjects Issues and Methodological Myopia"

Bruckman, Amy (2002) "Studying the Amateur Artist: A Perspective on Disguising Data Collected in Human Subjects Research on the Internet"

Nov 17. free speech and pornography // rhetorical analysis

Sunstein, Cass (2000) "The Daily We" Boston Review v26n3
Jenkins, Henry (2001) "Challenging the Consensus (response to Sunstein)" Boston Review

National Academies Press, NetSafeKids (2003)
      primer: "Pornography and the First Amendment"
      primer: "Internet Laws"

Children's Online Protection Act (COPA) -- enacted October 1998
"Ashcroft v. ACLU" Supreme Court (June 29, 2004)

- - -

Garde, Maureen (1997) "A Short Course on Reading and Understanding Court Opinions"

Tsai, Robert (2004) "Speech and Strife" Law and Contemporary Problems v62n4:102-129

THANKSGIVING WEEK (date/time TBD). digital copyright // cultural approaches to the law

American Bar Association, "Copyright Basics"
      only Sect. 1 "What Copyright Is" - Sect 12 "Copyright Registration"

Lessig, Lawrence (2004) "Property" Chapter 10 ofFree Culture: 116-173.

Boyle, James (1997) "A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism For the Net?" Duke Law Journal v47: 87+.

Spinello, Richard (2003) "The Future of Intellectual Property" Ethics and Information Technology v5n1

Samuelson, Pamela (2003) "DRM {and, or, vs.} the Law" Communications of the ACM v46n4: 41-45.

- - -

Silbey, Susan (1989) "A Sociological Interpretation of the Relationship Between Law and Society" in Jon Neuhaus (ed.), Law and the Ordering of Our Life Together: 1-27.

Dec 1. security, hacking, terrorism // tackling contemporary controversies

Scott, Michael (1993) "Hacking the Material World" Wired 1.03

"The Mentor" (1986) "The Hacker Manifesto"

Nissenbaum, Helen (2004) "Hackers and the Contested Ontology of Cyberspace" New Media and Society v6n2

Arquilla, John and David Ronfeldt (2001) "The Advent of Netwar (Revisited)" in John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy

U.S. White House, "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" (Feb 2003)
      read to p. 35 only

- - -

Martin, Brian and Eveleen Richards (1995) "Scientific Knowledge, Controversy, and Public Decision-Making" in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald Markle, James Petersen, and Trevor Pinch, eds. Handbook of Science and Technology Studies: 506-26.

Dec 8 (time TBD). research presentations

Dec 17. Final paper due, by 5:00pm.

From the Cornell "Code of Academic Integrity": Absolute integrity is expected of every Cornell student in all academic undertakings. Integrity entails a firm adherence to a set of values, and the values most essential to an academic community are grounded on the concept of honesty with respect to the intellectual efforts of oneself and others. Academic integrity is expected not only in formal coursework situations, but in all University relationships and interactions connected to the educational process, including the use of University resources. While both students and faculty of Cornell assume the responsibility of maintaining and furthering these values, this document is concerned specifically with the conduct of students. A Cornell studentıs submission of work for academic credit indicates that the work is the studentıs own. All outside assistance should be acknowledged, and the student's academic position truthfully reported at all times. In addition, Cornell students have a right to expect academic integrity from each of their peers. The full text of the Code of Academic Integrity can be found online at http://web.cornell.edu/UniversityFaculty/docs/AIC.pdf