Media-Culture Analy­sis for Dis­course Community

10 points; due July 13
500 words (min­i­mum) + media (image, video, etc)

 
Prompt:

Using one spe­cific exam­ple (recent or his­toric), dis­cuss a par­tic­u­lar form of dig­i­tal cul­ture in the net­worked par­tic­i­pa­tory con­text of cur­rent media con­di­tions.
As media analy­sis, limit descrip­tion in favor of sup­port­ing crit­i­cal ideas with details from thought­ful obser­va­tion, con­sid­er­ing and dis­cussing explic­itly with con­cepts from class (3 terms minimum).

Imag­ine your audi­ence is the “dis­course com­mu­nity” who under­stands and con­tributes to (reads/writes) dis­cus­sions about the cul­tural form (thus, assume some famil­iar­ity ― not need­ing to describe fun­da­men­tal aspects).

Try ana­lyz­ing the cul­tural exam­ple in terms of
media —
tech­nol­ogy and net­work plat­form (Inter­net, Web, soft­ware, sites, etc)
— and social prac­tices
(“con­sumers” & view­ers? “mul­ti­pli­ers”?)
in order to gen­er­ate insights about the rela­tion of tech­nol­ogy and culture.

(Pro­tip: ana­lyze this way first, before com­pos­ing, the way Bogost does with Face­book and the way Jenk­ins does with his pop/network cul­ture exam­ples — “break down” to aid crit­i­cal perspective.)

 
From this activ­ity, pro­pose (as brief con­clu­sion) your new under­stand­ing or view: for instance, about a key con­cept from a read­ing; net­worked media; fur­ther defin­ing “par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­ture“
(note, this con­clu­sion pro­posed can be spec­u­la­tive; it is mostly a “warm-up” toward Project 1 in this way, as an exer­cise devel­op­ing your new ideas from insights about the exam­ples observed).

 
 

---

 
 
Cri­te­ria (from syl­labus)

Posted to per­sonal blog, these infor­mal com­po­si­tions illus­trate atten­tive read­ing of assigned texts, progress toward project, and engage­ment with class top­ics rel­a­tive to sched­ule. Credit is earned for

(1) sub­mit­ting on-time and with suf­fi­cient length;

(2) demon­strat­ing atten­tion to class top­ics, con­tent knowl­edge, and crit­i­cal think­ing, par­tic­u­larly by describ­ing insights and connections;

(3) pro­vid­ing thought­ful and rel­e­vant responses to prompts, through spe­cial­ized discourse;

(4) using spe­cific exam­ples from per­sonal knowl­edge and/or respec­tive readings;

(5) while extend­ing rhetor­i­cal knowl­edge and mas­tery of writ­ing con­ven­tions, prac­tic­ing effi­cient prose
(i.e. min­i­miz­ing /avoiding sum­mary, rep­e­ti­tion, digres­sion, and unnec­es­sary discussion).