Draft: September 8, 2006

COMM 866 NEW MEDIA AND SOCIETY

Annenberg School for Communication

University of Pennsylvania

Fall, 2006

Mon 10:00-12:00 (Room ASC 318)

Prof. Keith Hampton

Office Hours: Thursdays 12:00-1:30 (Room ASC 327)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This seminar provides an overview of recent research on how “new media,” such as the Internet and mobile phones, influence community, social relationships, and public and private spaces. This subject is heavily weighted towards the evaluation of empirical work, the study of social networks, and research that address sociological research questions. Examples of questions that will be explored in this course include:

• Will new media replace existing forms of communication, such as face-to-face and telephone contact?
• Does the use of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) increase privatism?
• Are people cut off from their social networks as a result of in-home computer and Internet use?
• Will public participation and civil society atrophy as a result of new media use?

REQUIREMENTS

Students are not expected to have personal experience with the technologies discussed in this course. A major component of the course will involve the development and use of a personal blog. Students will receive access to the necessary blogging software and will be provided with basic instruction on how to maintain a blog.

Final grades will be based on an evaluation of 10 blog postings on the subject of the weekly course readings (20%), 20 comments on other students’ blog postings (10%), a presentation outlining the final project (10%), class participation (10%), and a final project (50%). Students are urged to pay close attention to due dates, late assignments will not be accepted.

Course readings and participation: Students are expected to have read the week’s readings in advance of the course meeting. Class meetings will be in a seminar format and students should be prepared to participate in a discussion based on the topic and readings of the week.

Blog Postings: Students are responsible for submitting short commentaries on 10 of the weeks’ readings (500-700 words). Commentaries should focus on a minimum of 3 of the readings from each week and should consist of limited summary; focusing on an evaluation of the readings and identifying 2-3 questions for discussion during the class meeting (focus on the papers’ key issues, strengths and limitations, and a comparison to previous weeks’ readings). Each commentary should be submitted as a post to the student’s personal class blog by 10:00am on the Friday before the class meeting. To be clear, students should post commentaries to their blog on the Friday before the topic is discussed in class.

Blog Comments: Each student is responsible for contributing comments to fellow students’ blogs. Comments should be a minimum of 125 words and offer a critique of that week’s posting, seek clarification, compare or contrast postings, or provide additional evidence or new information (such as a link to a related article, website, etc.). Each student must contribute a minimum of 20 comments, credit will be given for a maximum of two comments each week, students cannot comment on the same blog more than three times over the duration of the course. Comments must be posted by 8:00am on the day of class for posts related to that week’s readings.

Presentation: The in-class presentation is as an opportunity for students to explore individual interests and to make a preliminary presentation of their final project. Student’s presentations should be 10 minutes long, use PowerPoint, and follow the format of a formal conference presentation. Presentations of papers or proposals should include the following elements:

-Identification of the key problem.

-Research question(s).

-Three citations of key research in the area.

-Research methods and procedure.

-Main strengths and weaknesses of your methods.

Final project (due December 13): The final project can take on one of a number of different forms to be negotiated individually with the instructor. Projects should deal with course themes focusing on a topic of interest to the student. Possibilities for the final paper/project include a full research proposal (20-25 double spaced pages), software or a website, or a paper of near publishable quality based on the analysis of existing data or data collected as part of an original research project (15-20 pages).

COURSE MATERIALS

Readings, audio files, and grades will be available from the course Blackboard website:
https://courseweb.library.upenn.edu/.

Handouts, information on assignments, and other announcements will be available from the course blog:

http://www.mysocialnetwork.net/blog/866

COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1 (September 11) – Course / Blogging Introduction

Week 2 (September 18) – Yesterday’s Visions of Tomorrow

Castells, M. (2004). Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint. In M. Castells (Ed.), The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective (pp. 3-45). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Meyrowitz, J. (1997). Shifting Worlds of Strangers: Medium Theory and Changes in "Them" Versus "Us". Sociological Inquiry, 67(1), 59-71.

Rheingold, H. (1993). A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community. In L. M. Harasim (Ed.), Global Networks: Computers and International Communication (pp. 37-80). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Turner, Fred. (2005). “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community.” In Technology and Culture.

Wellman, Barry and Milena Gulia. (1999). “Net-Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities.” Pp. 331-366 in Networks in the Global Village, edited by Barry Wellman. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Week 3 (September 25) - Internet and Social Networks I

Putnam, Robert. (2001). “Social Capital Measurement and Consequences.” Canadian Journal of Policy Research 2(1):41-51.

McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Brashears, M. E. (2006). Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two decades. American Sociological Review, 71, 353-375.

Kraut, R., Lunmark, V., Patterson, M., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1998). “Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?” In American Psychologist 53(9): 1017-1031.

Nie, N., Hillygus, S., & Erbring, L. (2002). Internet Use, Interpersonal Relations and Sociability: A Time Diary Study. In B. Wellman & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), The Internet in Everyday Life (pp. 215-243). Oxford: Blackwell.

Nie, Norman, Irena Stepanikova, Heili Pals, Lu Zheng, and Xiaobin He (2005). Ten years after the birth of the Internet: How do Americans use the Internet in their daily lives? 2005 Report. Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/research/time_study_files/ProjectReport2005.pdf

Kraut, R., Kiesler, S., Boneva, B., Cummings, J., Helgeson, V., & Crawford, A. (2002). Internet Paradox Revisited. Journal of Social Issues, 58(1), 49-74.

Week 4 (October 2) - Internet and Social Networks II

Baym, N., Zhang, Y. B., & Lin, M.-C. (2004). Social Interactions Across Media: Interpersonal Communication on the Internet, Telephone and Face-to-Face. New Media & Society, 6(3), 299-318.

Zhao, S. (2006). Do Internet Users Have More Social Ties? A Call for Differentiated Analyses of Internet Use. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 11(3), article 8.

Wieland, D. M. (2005). Computer Addiction: Implications for Nursing Psychotherapy Practice. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 41(4), 153-161.

Sander, Thomas (2005). E-associations? Using Technology to Connect Citizens: The Case of Meetup.com. Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

Week 5 (October 9) - Internet and Social Networks III

Robinson, John, Meyer Kestnbaum, Alan Neustadtl and Anthony Alvarez (2002). “The Internet and Other Uses of Time.” In Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite, The Internet in Everyday Life. Blackwell.

Robinson, J., & Haan, J. D. (2006). Information Technology and Family Time Displacement. In R. Kraut, M. Brynin & S. Keisler (Eds.), Computers, Phones, and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology (pp. 51-69). New York: Oxford University press.

Quan-Haase, Anabel, Barry Wellman, James Witte, and Keith Hampton (2002). “Capitalizing on the Net: Social Contact, Civic Engagement and Sense of Community.” in Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite, The Internet in Everyday Life. Blackwell.

Boase, J., Horrigan, J., Wellman, B., & Rainie, L. (2006). The Strength of Internet Ties. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Haythornthwaite, C. (2002). Strong, Weak and Latent Ties and the Impact of New Media. The Information Society, 18, 1-17.

Week 6 (October 16) – Community Networking / Neighborhoods

Hampton, Keith and Barry Wellman. (2003). “Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb.” City and Community 2(4), 277-311.

Hampton, Keith. (2003). “Grieving For a Lost Network: Collective Action in a Wired Suburb.” The Information Society 19(5), 417-428.

Matei, Sorin and Sandra Ball-Rokeach (2001). “Real and Virtual Social Ties: Connections in the Everyday Lives of Seven Ethnic Neighborhoods”. American Behavioral Scientist 45(3), 550-564.

Mesch, G. S., & Levanon, Y. (2003). Community Networking and Locally-Based Social Ties in Two Suburban Localities. City & Community, 2(4), 335-351.

Hampton, Keith (forthcoming). e-Neighbors: Neighborhoods in the Network Society. Information, Communication and Society.

Kavanaugh, A., Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., Zin, T. T., & Reese, D. D. (2005). Community Networks: Where Offline Communities Meet Online. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 3.

Servon, L., & Pinkett, R. (2004). Narrowing the Digital Divide: The Potential and Limits of the US Community Technology Movement. In M. Castells (Ed.), The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective (pp. 319-338). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Week 7 (October 23) - Public Spaces

Goldberger, Paul. (2003, November). “Disconnected Urbanism: The Cell Phone Has Changed Our Sense of Place More Than Faxes, Computers, and E-Mail.” Metropolis Magazine.

Ling, Rich. (2002). “The Social Juxtaposition of Mobile Telephone Conversations and Public Spaces.” Presented at the conference on the social consequences of mobile telephones. Chunchon, Korea.

Humphreys, L. (2005). Cellphones in public: social interactions in a wireless era. New Media & Society, 7(6), 810-833.

Sandvig, C. (2004). An initial assessment of cooperative action in Wi-Fi networking. Telecommunications Policy, 28, 579-602.

Week 8 (October 30) – Third Places

Oldenburg, Ray. (2003). “The Third Place.” In David Levinson and Karen Christensen (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 1373-1375.

Ling, Rich. (1997). “One Can Talk About Common Manners!: The use of Mobile Telephones in Inappropriate Situations.” In Haddon, L (ed). Themes in Mobile Telephony. Telia, FarstaLing.

Lee, S. (1999). Private uses in public spaces: A study of internet cafe. New Media & Society, 1(3), 331-350.

Hampton, Keith and Neeti Gupta (forthcoming). Grande Wi-Fi: Social Interaction in Wireless Coffee Shops.

Week 9 (November 6) - Children and Youth

Jackson, L. A., vonEye, A., Biocca, F. A., Barbatsis, G., Zhao, Y., & Fitzgerald, H. E. (2006). Children's Home Internet Use: Antecedents and Psychological, Social, and Academic Consequences In R. Kraut, M. Brynin & S. Keisler (Eds.), Computers, Phones, and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology (pp. 145-167). New York: Oxford University press.

Farrell , Elizabeth. (September 2, 2005) “Logging On, Tuning Out: When Students Lose Themselves in Online Worlds, it can be Hard to bring Them Back to Reality.” The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Mesch, G., & Talmud, I. (2006). The Quality of Online and Offline Relationships: The Role of Multiplexity and Duration of Social Relationships. The Information Society, 22, 137-148.

Ling, R., & Yttri, B. (2006). Control, Emancipation, and Status. In R. Kraut, M. Brynin & S. Keisler (Eds.), Computers, Phones, and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology (pp. 219-234). New York: Oxford University press.

Ito, M., & Okabe, D. (2006). Intimate Connections. In R. Kraut, M. Brynin & S. Keisler (Eds.), Computers, Phones, and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology (pp. 235-247). New York: Oxford University press.

Week 10 (November 13) - Class Presentations

Week 11 (November 20) – Public Surveillance (and class presentations)

Koskela, H. (2000). 'The gaze without eyes': video-surveillance and the changing nature of urban space. Progress in Human Geography, 24(2), 243-265.

Lyon, David (2003). “Surveillance in the City.” In Steve Graham (ed.), The Cybercities Reader. New York: Routedge.

Green, Nicola (2001). “Who's Watching Whom? Monitoring and Accountability” in Mobile Relations, Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Curry, M., Phillips, D., & Regan, P. (2004). Emergency Response Systems and the Creeping Legibility of People and Places. The Information Society, 20, 357-369.

Jones, Quentin and Grandhi, Sukeshini (2005). Supporting Proximate Communities with P3-Systems: Technology for Connecting People-to-People-to-Geographical-Places. In M. Weiberg (ed) The Interaction Society: Practice, Theories, & Supportive Technologies. New York: Idea Group.

Zetter, K. (2005, April 15). Surveillance Works Both Ways. Wired News. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/1,67216-0.html

Holson, L. (2006, April 5). Disney Phone Service Has Parents in Mind. New York Times.

Week 12 (November 27) – Gaming

Chan, E., & Vorderer, P. (2006). Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Playing Video Games (pp. 77-113). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Jenkins, Henry (1999). Testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee.

http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/0504jen.pdf

Anderson, C., & Dill, K. (2000). Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 772-790.

Lee, K. M., & Peng, W. (2006). What Do We Know About Social and Psychological Effects of Computer Games? A Comprehensive Review of the Current Literature. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Playing Video Games (pp. 327-345). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Williams, Dmitri (2005). “Groups and Goblins: The Social and Civic Impact of Online Gaming”. Working paper.

Week 13 (December 4) – “Social Network” Websites

Verini, J. (2006, March). Will Success Spoil MySpace.com. Vanity Fair.

Marks, Paul (2006, June 9). Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites. New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025556.200

boyd, danah (forthcoming). None of this is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster.

Ellison, N., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2006). Spatially Bounded Online Social Networks and Social Capital: The Role of Facebook, Annual Conference of the International Communication Association. Dresden, Germany.

Gross, R., & Acquisti, A. (2005). Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks. Paper presented at the ACM Workshop on privacy in the Electronic Society, Alexandria, VA.

###Fred Stutzman INSNA presentation / forthcoming First Monday article?##