On this page: Announcements; Class Member Blogs; About the Class; Required Texts; Optional Texts; Schedule.

Announcements (recent first) This class is over! Get some sleep. (May 9) IMPORTANT: Our 4/30 class will be held off-campus and not in our usual room. (Apr 28) IMPORTANT: On Monday 4/9 our seminar will meet in G-58 FLB and not our usual classroom. (Apr 6) (This syllablus last changed on Monday Aug 13.) Class Member Blogs Edit your blog by logging in to Movable Type: http://529.niftyc.org/login (Username and password information was/will be sent to you via email.) If you need Help getting started, see: An Illustrated Guide to Blogging (PDF, 2 pages). Read each class member blog below: Kristin Drogos's Seminar Blog (15 entries) Jude Geiger's Seminar Blog (18 entries) Eric's Seminar Blog (14 entries) Ian Hill's Seminar Blog (14 entries) Terra Incognita (20 entries) Erin Janulis's Seminar Blog (16 entries) pantless bunnymuffin's beminar slog (16 entries) Emily Shaw's Seminar Blog (14 entries) Jing Wang's Seminar Blog (12 entries) Mengxiao Zhu's Seminar Blog (9 entries) Christian Sandvig's Seminar Blog (12 entries) Read all of the class blogs at the same time via Google Reader: Read the feed "529" in Google Reader About This Class Essentials Class Meetings: 121 Lincoln Hall, Mondays, 2-4:50 p.m. Instructor: Professor Christian Sandvig Office: 133 Lincoln Hall Office Hours: 3-4 Wednesdays and by appointment Office Telephone: 333-0141 (use only during office hours) Messages: 333-2683 (department office) Mailbox: 244 Lincoln Hall E-mail: csandvig@uiuc.edu Course Description This seminar addresses accounts and theorists of communication technologies as systems. Its focus is on influential books investigating entire systems of communication from competing theoretical perspectives. Its purpose is to develop an understanding of how the social sciences reason about systems of communication technology and humanity. The authors covered here address a wide range of concerns, including: How is the Internet situated in the normal experiences of users? How does digital convergence complicate national sovereignty? How did the telephone alter the conditions of modernity? However, in addition to these questions, our broader aim is to compare and contrast the construction of scholarly arguments incorporating technological systems, with an emphasis on the development of these systems. Organization The seminar covers a range of intellectual traditions and disciplines, with some emphasis on science and technology studies and the history of technology. Other perspectives and approaches include ethnography, "new" institutionalism, political economy, and cultural studies. This seminar is intended to be useful for students interested in the study of media and communication generally or of technology generally. The seminar is organized around competing theoretical concerns, assumptions, and approaches. Work by the authors covered includes four accounts of particular technologies: radio, television, the telephone, and the Internet. It also includes four accounts that make arguments across communication technologies and/or across history, often dealing with digital convergence and the Internet. Requirements Students will be responsible for a seminar paper of about 25 pages, and a paper proposal (or short paper) of 5 pages. Students may be responsible for a teaching assignment of their own design, as decided by the class as a group. In addition, there will be very short "weekly questions" due at the beginning of each class meeting when reading is assigned. No incompletes. Required Texts Claude Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. University of California Press, 1994 (reprint edition). (read more about this...) Raymond Williams, Television. Routledge, 2003. (read more about this...) Susan J. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. (read more about this...) Harold A. Innis, The Bias of Communication. University of Toronto Press, 1991. (read more about this...) Daniel Miller and Don Slater, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Berg Publishers, 2001. (read more about this...) Monroe E. Price, Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution and its Challenge to State Power. MIT Press, 2002. (read more about this...) Philip N. Howard. New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. Cambridge University Press, 2006. (read more about this...) Yochai Benkler. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, 2006. (read more about this...) Optional Texts William Strunk, Jr. & E. B. White, The Elements of Style. (4th edition.) Longman, 2000. Howard S. Becker, Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article. University of Chicago Press, 1986. Schedule Mon 01/22: Introduction No readings. Please buy all of the required books. This course does not use the university bookstore to distribute books. You may obtain these books from any bookstore. Ordering them online from a retailer with an agreeable return policy is suggested. For your convenience, they are organized here as a wish list on powells.com (return within 2 weeks for full refund) and amazon.com (return within 4 weeks for full refund, after 4 weeks 80% refund): If you are having a hard time finding the Williams book (or if you just want to save money), try a comparison engine like AddAll or Froogle or Bublos. Examples: Search AddAll for the Williams Book Search Froogle for the Williams book Mon 01/29: read ALL of Williams Today's question: Many consider Williams's Television to be the definitive book on television in modern society. However, in a negative review of Television written for the American Journal of Sociology in the late 1970s, W. Russell Neuman wrote that "scholars...will be forced to continue their search for a definite review of...television in modern society" because Williams's "critique lacks the sophistication and focus necessary to have a constructive influence on the design and execution of research on television." Neuman attributes this to, "Williams's uneasiness with...the whole notion of gathering data to test ideas." What is your opinion of this critique? Explain.   Mon 02/05: read ALL of Douglas Today's question: Douglas has written an explanation of the social construction of radio in order to avoid technological determinism. The "constructors" proposed in this book are inventors, the press, amateur operators, the military, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and others. One sure way to avoid "determinism" is to advance a narrative that contains more than one possible outcome. Can you use the materials in this book to propose a plausible alternative way that radio might have developed in the U.S.? If yes, explain the alternative. If not, discuss what information you would need in order to propose an alternative (that is, information that you don't have in this book).   Mon 02/12: read Fischer, ch. 1-4 Today's Question: When scholars write about communication technologies, they often focus on successful technologies. Successful technologies, in turn, are usually described as ever-expanding or "diffusing" throughout society until they are widespread. In this context, Fischer's analysis of the decline in rural telephony in Chapter 4 is remarkable and unusual. Please evaluate this argument in chapter 4. You might comment on his evidence for the decline, his analysis, or his explanation of it. Is the explanation convincing? You might compare it to discussions of other technologies we have read. Does this analysis demonstrate a strength or weakness in his method? (Or, Why did he find this decline when other scholars rarely if ever highlight any declines?) In-class handout: Seminar Papers and Proposals (PDF, 1 page) Mon 02/19: read Fischer, ch. 5-9 PAPER PROPOSAL DUE at the beginning of class. TIP: If you don't want to lose the formatting in your paper proposal, use the "UPLOAD FILE" button on the left side of the Movable Type interface to put a downloadable Microsoft Word file on your blog. I have relented and decided not to post a reading question for today, but please do finish the Fischer reading so that we have something to talk about. Mon 02/26: read Miller & Slater, ch. 1-4 Today's Question: Miller & Slater have elaborated four cross-cutting, non-exhaustive "dimensions" or "dynamics" that mark the Trinidadian Internet, and perhaps the Internet everywhere. Choose one of the four dynamics introduced in chapter 1 (Objectification, Mediation, Normative Freedom, Positioning) or a sub-concept within one of the dynamics (expansive realization, expansive potential). Analyze how the dynamic manifests in the ethnographic material presented in chapter 3 (Relationships) or chapter 4 (Being Trini). You might consider: What does the dynamic mean? How is the dynamic analytically useful? How is it applied? How is its use related to the method employed here, or the assumptions? OPTIONAL: Read other students paper proposals on their blogs. Mon 03/05: read Miller & Slater, ch. 5-7 Today's Question: For this answer, try to highlight a conclusion that Miller & Slater make that differs from what we know about an older technology. That is, Miller & Slater cover themes that are very familiar from our earlier readings -- such as businesspeople and consumers trying to come to terms with a new communication technology -- but they occasionally come to strikingly different conclusions. Consider Chapter 6, "Doing Business Online," which chronicles several instances where Trinis try to employ new communication technologies (Web site design businesses, textiles catalogs, Miss Universe, etc.). Compare one of these instances and any conclusions that Miller & Slater draw from this material (e.g., about decommodification, virtual vs. real, the dynamics from ch. 1) to an analogous instance with an older technology covered by another author in this course (Douglas, Marvin, Fischer, Williams). How do you explain this difference in conclusions? e.g., Is the difference the result of technology (the Internet?), the method, the theoretical approach, assumptions, Trini culture, etc.? Mon 03/12: read Innis, Introduction - p. 91 Today's Question: The Bias of Communication is known as a "classic" in the study of communication technology, but it is also described as "difficult," "nonlineal," "puzzling," and "a struggle" -- probably chiefly because the book does not build to a sustained or coherent argument. Choose one of the three essays assigned for today and read them in the manner suggested by the introduction -- as an "idea file." Identify some important concept, theory, or insight in the essay you chose and describe its importance. Please describe the idea critically as appropriate -- list drawbacks as well as praise. It may be helpful to reference earlier class readings as a point of comparison to show what is different about Innis' ideas or his disciplinary approach (economic history). Mon 03/19: BREAK -- NO CLASS Mon 03/26: read Innis: pp. 92-198 Today's Question: What would Innis make of the Internet? Write a brief analytical comment about the relation of the Internet to society that you can defend as consistent with Innis's ideas in some way. For example, you might employ one of his concepts (information monopoly, time-biased, space-biased) or borrow one of his analyses from an earlier technology (cuneiform's effects on the invention of abstraction in math) and apply it to the Internet. Mon 04/02: read ALL of Price Special Guest: Monroe Price Today's Question: In several of the books we've read so far, we have found the hope or fear that new communication technologies challenge national borders or that they create new conditions for international unity (e.g., they will "bring the whole world together" or make place irrelevant). The Price book is an extended analysis of this one idea. Throughout the book Price compares and contrasts the consequences of specific technologies (satellite radio, AM radio, shortwave radio, the Internet, television, newspapers, books, etc.) for transnational migration, identity formation, international relations, and domestic politics. There are several examples in each chapter from specific places. Speaking generally, where is the agency (meaning: the means of action) in Price's accounts? In other words, is there an account of causation here, and if so, what is it? What leads to the consequences identified here, and what would we need to change to obtain different consequences? Mon 04/09: read Howard, prologue (xvi) - p. 142 IMPORTANT ROOM CHANGE: This class will be held in G-58 FLB (Foreign Languages Building). That's in the basement. Special Guest: Philip Howard Today's Question: Assess one of the following concepts in light of either Howard's own examples or other material from this semester: (1) epistemic heterarchy, (2) political redlining, (3) political culture. You might consider one or more of the questions: How does Howard define the concept? How is it used? Is it analytically useful? Does it depend on important assumptions that are not stated? Given what you know about communication technology, does the definition imply a causal relationship that you find credible? Mon 04/16: read Howard, pp. 143 - 238 Also read: Designing Teaching / Lesson Plans (PDF, 3 pages) Speaking of Teaching 13(2). "Designing Courses." Winter, 2004. Download file (PDF, 5 pages) Today's question: Communication technologies have always had a role in political life. Is there something fundamentally or causally different about the newest information technologies in the political sphere? For example, you might consider: What aspects of communication and culture are structurally different about the political sphere as opposed to other kinds of activities? What aspects of new communication technologies (like blogs, online donations, citizenship, and political campaign software [e.g., VoteMover etc.]) are different from the older communication technologies that have been used for politics? Please refer to the Howard reading in supporting your answer. Mon 04/23: read Benkler, ch. 1-6 TEACHING ASSIGNMENT DUE For the teaching assignment, please post ONE COMPONENT of a class that teaches some aspect of the material covered in this seminar to an undergraduate audience. Example: Write a lesson plan using the format given in last week's assigned readings. Your teaching assignment can take any form relevant to teaching. Examples: A lesson plan, lecture notes, an active learning in-class activity, an assignment, a paper prompt, visual aids and/or examples, a quiz or part of an exam, or one week of a syllabus. A common mistake is to make this assignment too elaborate. Don't try to design an undergraduate course in one weekend! SOME SUGGESTIONS: Because other class members will read your work, be sure there is enough information in your post that we can all understand what you are trying to do. For instance, if your blog post takes the form of a class handout, you might also write an instructional note to other teachers that explains your goals. That is, feel free to include notes to the class to explain what you are doing if it might not be clear. There are also a lot of great ideas on class web sites from other universities, feel free to borrow them. (e.g., google " 'communication technology' syllabus") Mon 04/30: read Benkler, ch. 7-12 Also read all of the teaching assignments from last week (on the blogs). Today's question: Now that we are at the end of the semester, use your experience from all of the readings in this course to put Benkler's ideas in The Wealth of Networks in play with one of the other authors we have read. For instance, compare and contrast a central argument from Benkler to Price, Innis, Howard, or any of the readings in the class. You might consider: Is the real difference between the two arguments you chose found in the choice of a research method or a set of assumptions? Or, can "the Internet" be substituted for another technology described by an earlier author in this course? (and if so, are the author's arguments still true?) IMPORTANT ROOM CHANGE: This class meeting will be held at the off-campus location that we discussed in seminar. Wed 05/09: PAPER DUE -- NO CLASS papers due at 4:30 p.m. (the end of our assigned final exam period) Post the paper to your blog in an easily printable format that will look professional (e.g., Word or PDF).  Image Credits About the images on this page, from top: (1) The statue "The Spirit of Communications," by sculptor Evelyn Beatrice Longman (originally named "The Genius of Electricity"). From: Boettinger, H. M. (1977). The Telephone Book: Bell, Watson, Vail and American Life. Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Riverwood Publishers. Original image reproduced by The Bell System Memorial. (2) Box of Network Cable, San Diego County. Original photograph by Hope Hall. (3) Computer Graveyard, Detroit. Original photograph by Hope Hall.