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CASA 155/255 Syllabus

(please check back for changes during the quarter)

Note that because of © restrictions some of the readings are only accessible to students of this class.

Tue 9/26: Introduction

Online Communities - First Steps

Concepts of community, construction of community, online community, cyberspace, history of online communities and their conceptualization, computer mediated communication, online social networks, virtual and real communities, space and time, place-bound and non place-bound.

Tue 10/3:

Rheingold, H. 1993. The Virtual Community. Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Addison-Wesley. Revised edition 2000 Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (online)

GRAD STUDENTS ONLY: Turner, F. 2005. Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy. The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community. Technology and Culture 46.3 (2005) 485-512.

Tue 10/10:

Baym, N. 2000. Tune in, Log on: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community. Sage, London.

GRAD STUDENTS ONLY: Joseph, M 2002: The supplementarity of Community with Capital; or, A Critique fo the Romantic Discourse of Community. pp 1-30 in M. Joseph. Against the Romance of Community. U Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Tue 10/17:

Gajjala, R. 2004. Cyber Selves. Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women. Altamira, Walnut Creek CA.

GRAD STUDENTS ONLY: D. Boyd and Heer, J. 2006. Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster. In Proceedings of the Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-39), Persistent Conversation Track. Kauai, HI: IEEE Computer Society. January 4 - 7, 2006.

Identity and Privacy On A Global Stage

Practical, ethical and conceptual challenges of online research, public, semi-public and private spaces, true, false and multiple identities, embodiment and disembodiment, decontextualization, ethics and human subjects issues in a global context.

Tue 10/24:

Turkle, S. 1995. Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet. New York, Simon & Schuster. (Introduction, Chapter 7)

Nakamura, L. 2002: Headhunting on the Internet and Keeping it (virtually) real. In: Cybertypes. Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. Routledge, NY.

GRAD STUDENTS ONLY: Goffman, E. 1959. Performances. In: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1956.

Tue 10/31:

S. Orgad 2005. From Online to Offline and back. In: Hine, C. Virtual Methods. Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Berg, Oxford.

M. Sveningsson 2004 : Ethics in Internet Ethnography. In Buchanan, E. Readings in Virtual Research Ethics. Information Science Publishing, Hershey, PA.

M. Maczewski, Storey, M-A, and Hoskins, M. 2004. Conducting Congruent, Ethical, Qualitative Research in Internet Mediated Research Environments. In Buchanan, E. Readings in Virtual Research Ethics. Information Science Publishing, Hershey, PA.

C. Ess 2004: Are we there yet? In: Johns, Chen and Hall, J. Online Social Research. Peter Lang, New York.

GRAD STUDENTS ONLY: Hudson, J. and A. Bruckman 2005. Using Empirical Data to Reason about Internet Research Ethics. Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW). Pp. 287-306.

Cyberethnography - Field, Discipline and Method

Cyberethnography and cross-disciplinarity, traditional versus online ethnographic methods, new methodologies, interpretation and analysis of online ethnographic data, qualitative research, objects of online research

Tue 11/7:

Miller, D. and D. Slater 2000: The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Berg, Oxford.

GRAD STUDENTS ONLY: Marcus GE, 1995. Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24, 95-117.

Tue 11/14:

Hine, C. 2000. Virtual Ethnography. Sage, London.

GRAD STUDENTS ONLY: Beaulieu, A. 2004: Mediating Ethnography: Objectivity and the Making of Ethnographies of the Internet. Social Epistemology 18/2, 139-163.

(Tue 11/21 Thanksgiving Recess)

Lessons Learned: Implications of Virtuality - "VR" versus "IRL"?

Tue 11/28:

Woolgar, S.: Five Rules of Virtuality. pp.1-22 in: Woolgar, S. (ed.) 2002, Virtual society? Technology, cyberbole, reality. Oxford:Oxford University. Press.

Strathern, M.: Abstraction and Decontextualization: An Anthropological Comment. pp. 302-313 in: Woolgar, S. (ed.) 2002, Virtual society? Technology, cyberbole, reality. Oxford:Oxford University. Press.

NO ONLINE DISCUSSION.

Tue 12/05: Student presentations in class.

Final Paper Due Date: Tue 12/12.

Assessment:

There will be different requirements for Undergraduate and Graduate students. For both the ethnographic project is at the core of the course. Graduate students will be required to spend an hour to discuss additional readings online.

Undergraduates:

  • Research Paper: your paper will evolve from drafts you will begin writing in the first week of class. You will be asked to document your goals, your weekly research progress as well as your reflections along and around your project. The paper will also be peer-reviewed. (30%)
  • Ethnographic Assignments: weekly assignments will help you to learn to design and develop your research paper.(30%)
  • In-class Discussion: there will be a weekly plan to take turns in summarizing, commenting on, and leading the discussion of the assigned readings. (25%)
  • Presentation: an oral presentation of your ethnographic project, using a visual as an alternative representation of the paper. (15%)

Graduates:

  • Research Paper: your paper will evolve from drafts you will begin writing in the first week of class. You will be required to post revisions every week. The paper will also be peer-reviewed. (30%)
  • Online Discussion: there will be a weekly routine where you will take turns in summarizing, commenting on, and leading the discussion of the assigned readings. (30%)
  • In-class Discussion: there will be a weekly routine where you will take turns in summarizing, commenting on, and leading the discussion of the assigned readings. (25%)
  • Presentation: an oral presentation of your ethnographic project, using a visual as an alternative representation of the paper. (15%)

There will be no midterms. Instead I will meet with you and we will together review your paper and learning process.