Part 1: The social and Technological Contexts of Digital Journalism: Hierarchy Meets Heterarchy
1: Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Introductions: Where are we, where are we going?
Key Questions: Who are we and why are we in this class? Where is "news" in the digital environment? How do we characterize the present moment and the immediate future in regard to the practice of journalism?
2: Thursday, January 12
What was journalism? What was "the public?" What are digital media? What are its publics?
Readings:
- Robert Darnton, "Writing news and telling stories," Daedalus 104 Spring 1975: 175-197.
- Bocszowski, Digitizing the News, Chapter 1.
- Bruno Giussani, "A new media tells different stories." First Monday 2.4 (199). Available online at: [link]
- Henry Jenkins, "Introduction: 'Worship at the Altar of Convergence': A new paradigm for understanding media change," pp. 1-24. In Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, NYU Press, New York: 2006 (add to reader).
Web Resources:
- Jeff Jarvis: Deconstructing the Newspaper [link]
- How digital natives read the news [link]
Key Questions: How are journalistic routines, industry structures, and technology related to journalism's public role? How are changes in technology, editorial philosophies, roles of producer and consumer of information, changing the nature of news and journalism?
Part 2: Mass Journalism in Transition
3: Tuesday, January 17
When old journalism met new media
Readings:
- Mark Deuze, "The web and its journalisms: considering the consequences of different types of newsmedia online." New Media & Society 5.2 (2003): 203-230.
- Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation, Ch's 1, 11, 12
- Bocszowski, Digitizing the News, Chapter 3.
Key Questions: What kinds of news forms have emerged in the digital environment? How do they shift mass journalism's relationship to its audience?
4: Thursday, January 19
Writing for digital media:
Readings:
Resources for Web Design:
- A Web style guide put together by Yale University's Center for Advanced Instructional Media.
- Vincent Flanders' legendary site, [link] with examples of all that can go wrong…
Key Question: How can you "tell a story" in digital media?
Due: Blog entry describing Wikipedia edits
5: Tuesday, January 24
Telling Personal Stories in Digital Media:
Readings:
- Philip E. Agre, “Find Your Voice: Writing For a Webzine” Available online at: [link] (AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY)
- J.D. Lasica, "Digital Tools Easier to Grasp," Online Journalism Review, October 8, 2002, [link]
- Tony Pierce, "How to blog," [link]
Web Resources:
- The elements of digital storytelling, [link]
- Center for Digital Storytelling web site: [link]
- see especially: [link]
- WBEZ Chicago, “This American Life” see [link]
- Multimedia Narrative [link]
- Abbe Don's "We Make Memories" [link]
Key Questions: What innovative strategies have journalists used to bring non-journalists into the storytelling process? How have they used digital media to do so?
6: Thursday, January 26
Organization, Technology and Multi-Mediated Storytelling:
Readings:
- Bozckowski, Digitizing the News, Chapters 5, 6 and 7
- Terry Heaton, "TV News in a Postmodern World: The Unbundled Newsroom," Terry Heaton's Weblog, November 9, 2005 [link]
Key Questions: As pre-digital media organizations adopt digital media, how do organizational issues and new technologies shape the work they do?
7: Tuesday, January 31
Speedy Networks, New Gatekeepers:
Readings:
- David Manning White, “The 'gate keeper': a case study in the selection of news.” Journalism Quarterly 29.4 (1956): 383-390.
- Christopher Harper, “Journalism in a digital age.” Democracy and New Media. Eds. David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 271-280.
- John Hartley, “The frequencies of public writing: tomb, tome, and time as technologies of the public.” New Media and Democracy. Eds. David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 247-269.
Key Questions: How do the ways that digital media increase the speed of news production and enhance the use of networks as news producers challenge pre-digital journalistic ideals?
Due: Critical Paper #1
8: Thursday, February 2
Show Me the Money: Networked Technology and Financial Concentration:
Readings:
- Elisia L. Cohen “Online journalism as market-driven journalism.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 46.4 (2002).
- Robert McChesney “So much for the magic of technology and the free market: the world wide web and the corporate media system.” The world wide web and contemporary cultural theory. Eds. Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss. New York and London: Routledge, 2000. 5-36.
Web Resources:
- NY Times versus Blogs in Google [link]
- Bill Moyers media consolidation interviews & links [link]
- Iwantmedia blog on media consolidation [link]
- Center for Digital Democracy on media consolidation [link]
- Columbia Journalism Review [link]
- Who owns what?
Key questions: How do financial pressures shape the potential of online journalism to serve the public? Do new media free us from the problems of media consolidation?
9: Tuesday, February 7
The Emergence of Collaborative Citizen Journalism:
Readings:
- Bernard Moon, "Open It Up, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle!" [link]
- CommonTimes: A Community Driven Web News Site, [link]
- Yu, Yeon-Jung, "OhMyNews Makes Every Citizen a Reporter" [link]
- Moore, James, "The Second Superpower Rears Its Beautiful Head," [link]
Web Resources:
- Mediachannel: [link]
- Freedom Forum: [link]
- Jim Romenesko at Poynter: [link]
- Poynter: [link]
- Editor and Publisher: [link]
- Jeff Jarvis: [link]
- Dan Gillmor on Bayosphere: [link]
- Code of ethics for citizen journalists: [link]
- Citizen journalism links [link]
- How to Digg [link]
- Who owns citizen journalism content? [link]
- Narrative/citizen journalism in Bakersfield, CA [link]
- Craig Newmark on Citizen Journalism [link]
Key Questions: What role do networks of individuals, think tanks and other intermediaries play in shaping the news? What news-shaping forces are emerging from group blogs, citizen journalist, and citizen news-rating sites?
Guest: JD Lasica [link]
10: Thursday, February 9
“Personal” journalism: Pundits, Freelancers and Public Intellectuals:
Readings:
- Dan Gillmor, We The Media, Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12
- Craig Newmark's blog [link]
Web Resources:
- How Google News is changing the way newspapers and bloggers write headlines [link]
- BLOGGING, JOURNALISM & CREDIBILITY: Battleground and Common Ground [link]
Key Question: What’s the difference between a blogger, a journalist, a pundit and an intellectual? Or is there one anymore?
Guest: Craig Newmark [link] Transcript of speech Craig made, three days before appearing in our class
Part Three: New Publics, New Journalistic Forms:
11 Tuesday, February 14
Rethinking "The Public": The Origins and Nature of the Public Sphere
Readings:
- Nancy Fraser. “Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1991. 109-142.
- David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, Pp 3-17
- Rosen, Jay, "The Action of the Idea," The Idea of Public Journalism, Theodore L. Glasser, ed., New York: Guilford, 1999, pp 21-48
Web resources:
- Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention [link]
- Web tools open up government decision-making process [link]
- danah boyd's notes on Fraser [link]
- Habermas on Internet, 2006 [link]
Key Questions: What are the relationships among publics, media, and democracy? What might the role of journalism be in a world of multiple publics?
12 Thursday, February 16
The Public Sphere in The Internet Era
Readings:
- Michael Schudson, “Click here for democracy: a history and critique of an information-based model of citizenship.” Democracy and new media. Eds. Henry Jenkins, David Thorburn and Brad Seawell. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. 49-60.
- Philip E. Agre, “Growing a democratic culture: John Commons on the wiring of civil society.” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 61-67.
- Alinta Thornton, "Does Internet Create Democracy?" Masters Thesis, University of Technology, Sydney, 2002, [link]
Web resources:
- MoveOn.Org: [link]
- Howard Dean’s Campaign Site: [link]
- City of Palo Alto: [link]
- Acción Zapatista: [link]
- Deliberative Polling: [link]
- Groups map media's influence on elections: [link]
- A democracy of groups [link]
8 Blog rage
[link]
Key Questions: What kinds of “publics” are emerging in and around digital media? What kinds of power struggles erupted when broadcast channels were confronted by the emergence of many-to-many media? What role does online discourse play in the future of democracy – and what role does journalism play in digital debate and deliberation?
Guest: Zack Rosen [link]
13 Tuesday, February 21
New Communities, New Routines: Early Alternatives:
Readings:
- Nina Eliasoph, “Routines and the making of oppositional news.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5.December (1988): 313-334.
- Leon V. Sigal, "Sources Make The News", in Manoff & Schudson, Reading the News, pp. 9-37
- “Indymedia.org: A New Communications Commons” Dorothy Kidd in McCaughey, Martha, and Michael D. Ayers. Cyberactivism: online activism in theory and practice. New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 47-70.
- “Emerging Alternatives: Edging away from anarchy: Inside the Indymedia Collective,” Gal Beckerman, CJR 2003
Key Question: How do the politics of community news producers, news routines and new technologies interact?
Guest: Fabrice Florin [link] Pix [link]
14 Thursday, February 23
Guest: Dan Gillmor [link]
14 Tuesday, February 28
New Communities, News Communities:
Readings:
- Howard Rheingold, “A slice of my life in my virtual community.” High noon on the electronic frontier: conceptual issues in cyberspace. Ed. Peter Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992/1996. 413-436.
- humdog. “pandora's vox: on community in cyberspace.” High noon on the electronic frontier: conceptual issues in cyberspace. Ed. Peter Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. 437-444.
- Fred Turner, "Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: the WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community," Technology and Culture, vol 46 no 3, July 2005, 485-512.
Web Resources:
- Robin Good on Digital Communities [link]
- Rethinking Virtual Communities [link]
- Ars Electronica Digital Communities Award Jury Statement [link]
- Nielsen study highlights power of online ocmmunities [link]
Key Questions: How do network forums work? What roles do they play in the creation and circulation of news? Do online communities erode or augment face to face communities?
Guests: John Coate and Fred Turner [link][link]
15 Thursday, March 2
Social Software and We Media
Readings:
- J.D. Lasica, "News That Comes to You," Online Journalism Review, January 23, 2003, [link]
- Jon Udell, "Tag Mania Sweeps the Web," Jon Udell, , July 20, 2005, [link]
- Timo Hannay, "Tagging and Participative Journalism," You're It – a Blog on Tagging, [link]
- Howard Rheingold, "Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism," Online Journalism Review, July 9, 2003, [link]
- Yuki Noguchi, "Camera Phones Lend Immediacy to Images of Disaster," Washington Post, July 8, 2005, p 1 16 [link]AR2005070701522.html
Web Resources:
- Wikipedia [link]
- Bloglines [link]
- Del.icio.us [link]
- Flickr [link]
- Fastr (Flickr game) [link]
- Beyond the blog -- Flickrtation [link]
- Knowledge sharing with networked learning tools [link]
- Washington Post plus del.icio.us [link]
Key Questions: What news-shaping forces are emerging from social search, tagging, and other Web-based "folksonomic" media?
Guest: Ross Mayfield [link]
16 Tuesday, March 7
Reputation Economies and Information Networks:
- Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs, “The Evolution of Reputation”
- Gary Rivlin, “Leader of the Free World” Wired 11.11 (November, 2003)
- Thomas Goetz, “Open Source Everywhere” Wired 11.11 (November, 2003)
- Cass Sunstein, “The Daily We” The Boston Review, Summer, 2001. [link]
- Open Source Journalism: [link]
Web Resources:
- Epic [link] <--- We will watch this in class
- Slashdot: News for Nerds: [link]
- Reputation Mechanisms: [link]
- Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility: [link]
Key Question: How are the dynamics of open source production processes affecting the ways journalists serve the public?
Guest: Erik Sundelof [link]
17 Thursday, March 9
Code as Law, Architecture as Politics
Readings:
- Lawrence Lessig, Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999: Ch. 1, “Code is Law” (3-8), Ch. 6 “Cyberspaces” (63-84), Ch. 7 “What Things Regulate,” (85-99).
- David Isenberg, The Rise of the Stupid Network, 1997: [link]
- Manuel Castells, "Why Networks Matter," Network Logic: Who Governs in an Interconnected World?, Helen McCarthy, Paul Miller, Paul Skidmore, eds, London: Demos, 2004, pp 221-224, [link]
Web Resources:
- Lessig Blog: [link]
- Architectural Principles of the Internet: [ftp]
- The End of the Internet? [link]
Key Questions: How are social processes being written into and performed by computer code? In what ways is the architecture of communication media a political matter? What are the implications of these phenomena for journalists?
Guest: Lawrence Lessig [link]
Due: Critical Paper #2
Part Four: Journalism’s Public Role, Revisited
19: Tuesday, March 14
What is journalism for, now?
Readings:
- Kovac and Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism, pp. 9-110
Key Question: Given the new organizational, economic and discursive forms associated with network technologies, can journalists still serve a single public?
20 Thursday, March 16
Readings: To be chosen from student blog postings through the quarter.
