HU Credits: 3

Degree/Cycle: 1st degree (Bachelor)

Responsible Department: MATAR - Interfaces of Technology, Society, and Networks

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Nicholas John

Coordinator Email: n.john@huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Prof. John: Tuesday, 10-11
Ms. Sharon

Teaching Staff:
Prof Nicholas John,
Mr. Tom Divon

Course/Module description:
This course will offer a broad introduction to theories and research about the social, cultural and political implications of new media. It will explore theories such as the network society and information society, interrogating key concepts such as "digital", "privacy", “identity” and “communication”. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to think critically about the potential benefits and dangers of new media.

Course/Module aims:
To examine the relationship between new media and society
To instill critical thinking about new media

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
To define key terms and concepts related to the internet and new media.
To place new media in their cultural and economic context.
To speak and write critically about the latest issues around new media

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Frontal lectures and a great deal of class discussion.
Discussion of articles in tutorial groups

Course/Module Content:
Topics to be covered in the course include:
• What is the internet
• What are social network sites?
• Facebook
• Digital identity
• Computer-mediated communication
• Algorithms
• Search
• New media, politics and power
• Disconnectivity
• Privacy

Required Reading:
This is not the final reading list:

Goldsmith, J. L., & Wu, T. (2006). Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. New York: Oxford University Press.
John, N. A. (2011). The diffusion of the Internet to Israel: the first 10 years. Israel Affairs, 17(3), 327-340.
Chapter 1 of Abbate, J. (1999). White Heat and Cold War: The Origins and Meanings of Packet Switching. In Inventing the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’. New Media & Society, 12(3), 347-364.
Light, B., Burgess, J. & Duguay, S. (2018). The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps. New Media & Society 20(3), 881-900.
Manovich, L. (2001). Principles of New Media (27-55) in The language of new media. MIT press.‏
boyd, d., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.
Ellison, N. B., & boyd, d. m. (2013). Sociality through social network sites. In The Oxford handbook of internet studies.
Chapter 1 of Meikle, G. (2016). Social media: communication, sharing and visibility (1 Edition. ed.). New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Ellison, N. B., & boyd, d. m. (2013). Sociality through social network sites. In The Oxford handbook of internet studies.
boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662-679.
Marwick, A. E., & Boyd, D. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New media & society, 13(1), 114-133.
Chapter 1 of Halavais, A. M. C. (2009). Search engine society. Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity.
Chapter 1 of Hillis, K., Petit, M., & Jarrett, K. (2012). Google and the Culture of Search (pp 2-29). Routledge.‏
Stolero, N. & Segev, E. (Under Review). Broad and narrow perceptions of information seeking, opportunities and risks among adolescents, young adults and adults.
Segev, E. (2010). Google and the Digital Divide: The Bias of Online Knowledge (Ch. 3: Google and the politics of online searching, pp. 47-72). London: Chandos Publishing.
Sharing, John, N.A., http://culturedigitally.org/2014/05/sharing-draft-digitalkeywords/
Chapter 6 (‘Sharing files’) of John, N. A. (2016). The age of sharing. John Wiley & Sons.
John, N. A. (2013). Sharing and Web 2.0: The emergence of a keyword. new media & society, 15(2), 167-182.‏
דרור, יובל (2014). פרטיות באינטרנט הישראלי. ראשון לציון: המסלול האקדמי, המכללה למנהל
Marwick, Alice E, & boyd, danah. (2014). Networked privacy: How teenagers negotiate context in social media. New Media & Society, 16(7), 1051-1067.
Norberg, P. A., Horne, D. R., & Horne, D. A. (2007). The privacy paradox: Personal information disclosure intentions versus behaviors. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 41(1), 100-126.
בירנהק, מיכאל. (2010). מרחב פרטי. בר אילן, נבו. פרק א', עמודים 37-55.
Beer, David. (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious. New Media & Society, 11(6), 985-1002.
Gillespie, Tarleton. (2014). The relevance of algorithms. In Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J Boczkowski, & Kirsten A Foot (Eds.), Media Technologies (pp. 167-193). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT.
Bucher, T. (2017). The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms. Information, communication & society, 20(1), 30-44.
Gerrard, Y., & Gillespie, T. (2019, February 21) When algorithms think you want to die. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/when-algorithms-think-you-want-to-die/
Chapter 1 of Burgess, J. (2009). YouTube: Online video and participatory culture. Cambridge: Polity.
Jenkins, H., Ford, S. & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable Media (Ch. 1: Introduction: Why Media Spreads, pp. 1-46). New York: NYU Press
Sharon, T., & John, N. A. (2018). Unpacking (the) secret: Anonymous social media and the impossibility of networked anonymity. New Media & Society, 20(11), 4177-4194.
John, N. A., & Dvir-Gvirsman, S. (2015). ‘I don’t Like you any more’: Facebook unfriending by Israelis during the Israel-Gaza conflict of 2014. Journal of communication, 65: 953–974.
John, N. & Nissenbaum, A. (2019). An agnotological analysis of APIs: or, dysconnectivity and the ideological limits of our knowledge of social media. The Information Society. Online First.
Light, B., & Cassidy, E. (2014). Strategies for the suspension and prevention of connection: Rendering disconnection as socioeconomic lubricant with Facebook. new media & society, 16(7), 1169-1184.‏
Rogers, R. (2017). Digital Methods for cross-platform analysis (pp. 91-110). Sage Handbook of Social Media. London: Sage.
Rogers, R. (2017). Foundations of Digital Methods: Query Design (pp. 75-94). The Datafied Society. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Additional Reading Material:
This is not the final reading list.

Beer, David. (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious. New Media & Society, 11(6), 985-1002.
boyd, danah. (2010). Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications. In Zizi Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 39-58): Routledge.
Consalvo, Mia, & Ess, Charles (Eds.). (2011). The handbook of internet studies (Vol. 14): John Wiley & Sons.
Ellison, Nicole B, Steinfield, Charles, & Lampe, Cliff. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143-1168.
Hillis, Ken, Petit, Michael, & Jarrett, Kylie. (2013). Google and the Culture of Search. New York: Routledge.
Marwick, Alice E, & boyd, danah. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114-133.
Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor. (2011). Delete: the virtue of forgetting in the digital age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Portwood-Stacer, Laura. (2012). Media refusal and conspicuous non-consumption: The performative and political dimensions of Facebook abstention. New Media & Society, 15(7), 1041-1057. doi:10.1177/1461444812465139

Grading Scheme :
Essay / Project / Final Assignment / Referat 50 %
Submission assignments during the semester: Exercises / Essays / Audits / Reports / Forum / Simulation / others 50 %

Additional information: