Course Update

Dear all in Internet, Self and Society,

thanks for an enjoyable session yesterday (22/03)! Before I let you have your Easter holidays, let me give you some information about April: The Doodle vote resulted in our extra session taking place Friday morning, 20 April 2018, from 9:00 to 12:00. That means we will take our next sessions in the following sequence and on the following days: Session: "Rules, interactions, institutions, performances" (originally scheduled for April 12) on Thursday, April 19, 2018, from 2:00 pm. Session "Politics part I" (originally scheduled for April 19) on Friday, April 20, from 9:00.

On Thursday we will have presentations by Layao Han on Hogan (2010); Bimala on Tiidenberg and Cruz (2015) and Thea on van Dijck (2013).

On Friday we will hear Rebecca talk about Hartley (2010) and Huilin Shi about Chadwick et al. (2016). Please prepare these texts carefully so that we can have a good discussion!

And one more thing: I promised to give you some hints as to how to write an abstract:

The idea with this abstract is that it should give me (and you) a brief but precise idea of your term paper. As said frequently, the term paper is to bring your research interests together with the scope/interest of the course: specifically, to look at digital, networked media for their impact on us as individuals (as well as culture) and society. How do media form us as social beings? How do we form these media in return (through the particular ways of using them [which are never entirely the same as those intended by the creators])? How do our (ideal and actual) uses effect the sociocultural whole?

That means you find an online page, an app (or a couple of similar apps), a network function, a (political) discussion board etc. and approach it with those questions. As said yesterday: methods to approach these objects and phenomena with are: discourse analysis, all kinds of textual and aesthetic analysis, hermeneutics.  But we could also add (small scale) content analysis here (in order to map a field more roughly). Rhetorics is another related field. Mainly and overall, however, I want you to analyse and interpret. Be critical and reflected! (And also: have fun and engage with your research object - let it irritate and/or fascinate you!)

The abstract should contain the following: what is it you want to research? Why? What material? Argue for your selection of materials! What theoretical perspectives? With what method(s)? What course literature can be made to apply to it? What are your expected outcomes?

This should be feasible within 500 words! You can send me more or less - I am not fussy. The main thing is that it communicates your project idea.

Hope that helps!

Happy Easter,

Steffen

PS: The lecture slides of the first five sessions are now in the Fronter Archive!