HU Credits: 3

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: Communication & Journalism

Semester: 1st Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Prof. Paul Frosh

Coordinator Email: msfrosh@mscc.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Monday 12.00-13.00

Teaching Staff:
Prof Paul Frosh
Ms. Hadas Schlussel

Course/Module description:
It has become common to claim that we live in a new kind of society and a historically distinctive era: the information society, the digital age. That changes in media technologies have produced a profound revolution in our everyday lives as well as in our larger social, cultural, economic and political structures. Despite the long history of communication, it seems that contemporary digital technologies have not only transformed how we use media, but have made media more central than ever to human civilization.

Focusing on a series of key words in digital culture studies, this course asks: how can we make sense of these developments in communication technologies, and what are their implications for self and society? What is the impact of technological change on personal identity, social relationships, and political behaviour? Is professional journalism viable or even necessary in an age of tweets, blogs and increasing numbers of amateur news images? Are new media really so new, and what happens to ‘old’ media like photography, television, books and music in a digital culture? And what might it mean for us to be perpetually available to others – and subject to perpetual surveillance by others - through mobile media?

Course/Module aims:
A critical introduction to the range of research fields dealing new digital media - their communicative characteristics and their social, cultural and political significance.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
To explain the major theories and topics in research on communication in the digital age.
To achieve a high level of competence in conceptualizing communicative, social, political and cultural questions concerning new media.
To produce in-depth critical readings of advanced theoretical writings and research in the field.
To compare and contrast central thinkers and schools of thought and to interpret and evaluate their points of similarity and difference.
To analyze contemporary empirical communications and cultural phenomenon in the light of the works studied.

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Lectures, Exercises and Assignments

Course/Module Content:
1. Introduction and key word 1: Digital
2-3 Information
4-5 Remediation
6-7. Interface
8-9 Network
10-11 Platform
12-13 Mobile

Required Reading:
2. עידן המידע וחברת הרשת: היפותזות היסטוריות או מציאות חדשה?

Manovich L. (2001) What is New Media? In The Language of New Media, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press (18-55).

Lyon, D. (1995) The Roots of the Information Society Idea. In N. Heap, R. Thomas, G. Eimon, R. Mason and H. Mackay (eds) Information Technology and Society: A Reader. London: Sage and Open University Press (54-73).


3. בני אנוש וטכנולוגיה: המחשב כמכונה אינטליגנטית
סרט: 2001 A Space Odyssey

Turkle, S. (1997) A Tale of Two Aesthetics. In Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York, Phoenix: Touchstone (29-49).


4. וירטואליות
סרט: Existenz

De Souza e Silva, A. and Sutko, D. (2011) Theorizing Locative Technologies Through Philosophies of the Virtual. Communication Theory 21: 23-42.


5-6. מדיה דיגיטליים ויחסים חברתיים

Aguiton. C. & Cardon, D. (2007) The Strength of Weak Cooperation: an Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Web 2.0. Communications & Strategies, 65: 51-65.

Schwartz, O. (2011) Who moved my conversation? Instant messaging, intertextuality and new regimes of intimacy and truth. Media, Culture and Society 33(1): 71–87.


7. מדיה חדשים: מאפיינים והשלכות תרבותיות

Shifman, L. (2104) When Memes Go Digital. Chapter 3 in Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.


8. האינטרנט וה-:World Wide Web דמוקרטיזציה, פרגמנטציה או הגמוניה?

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2011) The Googlization of Us: Universal Surveillance and Infrastructural Imperialism. Chapter 3 of The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). Berkeley: University of California Press (82-114).

Benkler, Y. (2006) Political Freedom Part 2: The Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere. Chapter 7 in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, New Haven (212-272).
Available for download as a PDF file from:
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Download_PDFs_of_the_book


9. מדיה ישנים בעולם חדש אמיץ 1: עיתונאות

Hermida, A. (2010) Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism. Journalism Practice, 4(3): 297-308.


10. מדיה ישנים בעולם חדש אמיץ 2: טקסט וקול

Sterne, J. (2006) The mp3 as cultural artifact. New Media and Society 8(5): 825–842.


11. מדיה ישנים בעולם חדש אמיץ 3: צילום וטלוויזיה

Frosh, P. (2015) The Gestural Image: The Selfie, Photography Theory and Kinesthetic Sociability. International Journal of Communication, 9: 1607–1628.

Rubinstein, D. and Sluis, K. (2008) A Life More Photographic: Mapping the Networked Image, Photographies 1(1): 9-28.
.

12. מדיה ניידים

Garcıa-Montes, J. M., Caballero-Munoz, D. and Perez-Alvarez, M. (2006) Changes in the self resulting from the use of mobile phones. Media, Culture & Society 28(1): 67–82.

Additional Reading Material:
2. עידן המידע וחברת הרשת: היפותזות היסטוריות או מציאות חדשה?

Castells, M. (2000) Chapter 1: The Information Technology Revolution. In The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell (28-76).

Robins, K. and Webster, F. (1999) The Long History of the Information Revolution. In Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual Life. London: Routledge (89-110).

Nunberg, G. (1996) Farewell to the Information Age. In G. Nunberg (ed) The Future of the Book. Berkeley: University of California Press (103-136).

Benkler, Y. (2006) Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge. Chapter 1 in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press (1-28).
Available for download as a PDF file from:
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Download_PDFs_of_the_book


3. בני אנוש וטכנולוגיה: המחשב כמכונה אינטליגנטית
סרט: 2001 A Space Odyssey

Turing, A. (1950) Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 59(236): 433-460.
Also in: N. Wardip-Fruin and N. Montfort (eds.) The New Media Reader. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press (49-64).

Van Dijck, J. (2005) From shoebox to performative agent: the computer as personal memory machine. New Media & Society 7(3): 311–332.

Hayles, N. K. (1999) Toward Embodied Virtuality. Chapter 1 in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1-24).

Weizenbaum, J. (1976) Introduction. In Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co. (1-16).
Also in: N. Wardip-Fruin and N. Montfort (eds.) The New Media Reader. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press (367-378).

Nass, C. and Moon, Y. (2000) Machines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to Computers, Journal of Social Issues 56(1): 81-103.


4. וירטואליות

Marie-Laure, R. (2001) Virtual Reality as Dream and as Technology. Chapter 2 in Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press (48-74).

Manovich, L. (2006) The Poetics of Augmented Space. Visual Communication 5(2): 219-240.

Robins, K. (1995) Cyberspace and the World We Live. In M. Featherstone and R. Burrows (eds.) Cyberspace/ Cyberbodies/ Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, London, Sage/ Theory, Culture and Society.
Also in: Kevin Robins (1996) Into the Image: Culture and Politics in the Field of Vision. London, Routledge (83-104).

Shields, R. (2003) The Return of the Virtual. Chapter 1, The Virtual. London: Routledge (1-17).


5-6. מדיה דיגיטליים ויחסים חברתיים

boyd, d. and Ellison, N. (2008) Social Networking Sites: Definition, History, Scholarship, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13: 210-230.

Slater, D. (2002) Social Relationships and Identity Online and Offline. In Lievrouw L. and Livingstone S. (Eds) Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs. London: Sage (533-546).

Baym N. K. (2010) New Relationships, New Selves? Chapter 5 in Personal Connections in the Digital Age. London, Polity (99-121).

Miller, V. (2008) New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture, Convergence 14(4): 387-400.

Rheinghold, H. (1993) The Virtual Community. Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2. Available online at: http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/

Wittel, A. (2001) Toward a Network Sociality. Theory, Culture & Society. 18(6): 51–76.

boyd, d. (2008) Facebook’s Privacy Trainwrek: Exposure, Invasion and Social Convergence, Convergence 14(1): 13-20.

Turkle S. (1997) Aspects of the Self. in Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York, Phoenix: Touchstone (177-209).


7. מדיה חדשים: מאפיינים והשלכות תרבותיות

Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Immediacy, Hypermediacy and Remediation in Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (20-52).

Jenkins, H. (2004) The cultural logic of media convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7(1): 33-43.

Blanchette, J. F. (2011) A Material History of Bits. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62(6): 1042–1057.

Peters, B. (2009) And lead us not into thinking the new is new: a bibliographic case for new media history. New Media and Society 11(1&2): 13-30

Deuze, M. (2006) Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture. The Information Society 22: 63-75.

Lüders, M. (2008) Conceptualizing Personal Media, New Media and Society 10(5): 683-702.

Galloway A. R. (2010) The Anti-Language of New Media. Discourse 32(3): 276-284.


8. האינטרנט וה-:World Wide Web דמוקרטיזציה, פרגמנטציה או הגמוניה?

Terranova, T. (2000) Free Labour: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy. Social Text 63, 18(2): 33-58.

Dahlberg, L. )2005) The Corporate Colonization of Online Attention and the Marginalization of Critical Communication?. Journal of Communication Inquiry 29(2): 160-180.

Tsatsou, P. (2011) Digital divides revisited: what is new about divides and their research? Media, Culture & Society 33(2): 317–331.

Mallin, B. (2011) A Very Popular Blog: The Internet and the Possibilities of Publicity. New Media and Society 13(2): 187–202.

Lawrence, E., Sides, J. and Farrell, H. (2010) Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and Polarization in American Politics. Perspectives on Politics 8(1): 141-157.

Poster, M. (1997) Cyberdemocracy: the Internet and the Public Sphere, in D. Holmes (ed.) Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace. London: Sage (25-35).

McChesney, R. (2000) So Much for the Magic of Technology and the Free Market: The World Wide Web and the Corporate Media System, in Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss (eds) The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory. London: Routledge.


9. מדיה ישנים בעולם חדש אמיץ 1: עיתונאות

Deuze, M. (2003) The Web and its Journalisms: Considering the Consequences of Different Types of Newsmedia Online. New Media & Society 5(2): 203-230.

Anderson, C. W. (2011) Between creative and quantified audiences: Web metrics and changing patterns of newswork in local US newsrooms. Journalism 12(5): 550–566.

Redden, J. and Witschge, T. (2010) A New News Order? Online News Content Examined. In Natalie Fenton (ed.) New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age. London: Sage (171-186).

Freedman, D. (2010) The Political Economy of the ‘New’ News Environment. In Natalie Fenton (ed.) New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age. London: Sage (35-50).

Thorson, E. (2008) Changing Patterns of News Consumption and Participation. Information, Communication & Society 11(4): 473–489.

Schudson, M. (2010) Political Observatories, Databases & News in the Emerging Ecology of Public Information, Dædalus 139(2):100-109.


10. מדיה ישנים בעולם חדש אמיץ 2: טקסט וקול

Rothenbuhler, E. W. and Peters, J. D. (1997) Defining Phonography: An Experiment in Theory. The Musical Quarterly 81(2):. 242-264.

Bolter, J. D. (1989) Beyond Word Processing: The Computer as a New Writing Space. Language and Communication 9(2/3): 129-142.

Sofer, O. (2010) ‘Silent Orality’: Toward a Conceptualization of the Digital Oral Features in CMC and SMS Texts. Communication Theory 20: 387-404.

Baron, N. (2008) Gresham’s Ghost: Challenges to Written Culture. Chapter 9 in Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. Oxford: Oxford University Press (183-212).

Nunberg, G. (1993) The Places of Books in the Age of Electronic Reproduction. Representations 42: 13-37.

Levy, D. M. (2001) Chapter 8: A Bit of Digital History, in Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age. New York: Arcade (137-157).

Berry, R. (2006) Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star? Profiling Podcasting as Radio. Convergence 12(2): 143–162.

11. מדיה ישנים בעולם חדש אמיץ 3: צילום וטלוויזיה

Lister, M. (1997) Photography in the Age of Electronic Imaging. In Liz Wells (ed) Photography: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge (251-289).

Uricchio, W. (2009) The Future of a Medium Once Known as Television. In P. Snickars and P. Vonderau (eds.) The YouTube Reader, National Library of Sweden (24-39).

Caldwell, J. (2004) Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the Culture of Conglomeration. In L. Spigel and J. Olsson (eds) Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Durham, NC.: Duke University Press (41-74).

Lotz, A. (2009) What Is U.S. Television Now? The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 625: 49-59.

Chamberlain, D. (2010) Television Interfaces. Journal of Popular Film and Television 38(2): 84-88.

Burgess, J. and Green J. (2009) The Entrepreneurial Vlogger: Participatory Culture Beyond the Professional-Amateur Divide. In P. Snickars and P. Vonderau (eds) The YouTube Reader. National Library of Sweden (89-107).

Elsaesser, T. (2013) The “Return” of 3-D: On Some of the Logics and Genealogies of the Image in the Twenty- First Century. Critical Inquiry 39(2): 217-246.

12. מדיה ניידים


Lapenta, F. (2011) Geomedia: on location-based media, the changing status of collective image production and the emergence of social navigation systems. Visual Studies 26(1): 14-24.

Packer, J. and Oswald, K. F. (2010) From Windscreen to Widescreen: Screening Technologies and Mobile Communication. The Communication Review 13: 309–339.

Richardson, I. (2007) Pocket Technospaces: the Bodily Incorporation of Mobile Media, Continuum 21(2): 205-215.

Rule, J. B. (2001) From Mass Society to Perpetual Contact: Models of Communication Technologies in Social Context. In J. E. Katz and M. A. Aakhus (eds.) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (242-254).

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 0 %
Project work 65 %
Assignments 25 %
Reports 10 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information:
The language of instruction is Hebrew. The bibliography updated on the course Moodle site is the final version.