Attendance Activity (10 Minutes)

What’s a good thing that’s happened to you in the past week?

Discuss the Third Project and the Last Blog Post (10 Minutes)

Tunneling (10-minute stream of consciousness as a blogpost).

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, ‘Musing among the vegetables?’ — was that it? — ‘I prefer men to cauliflowers’ - was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out to the terrace — Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull, it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished — how strange it was — a few saying about cabbages.

• Pick a smell or a song that brings up a specific memory. Write for ten minutes about the memory, stream-of-consciousness style. Don’t stop writing at all.

Tunneling 2 (20 minutes)

• Go outside into the quad. Write for 10 minutes, stream-of-consciousness about everything you hear. Don’t listen to the meaning of the speech, just get at all of the sounds you hear, write them one at a time. If the sounds make you reflect on any memories, write those down as well.

Reflection (10 minutes)

I doubt there’s a computer simulation on the horizon capable of accurately representing all the activity in a single cubic centimeter of soil or the entire sensory experience of clipping one toenail, much less an entire social world of thousands of human users.

Reflect on what you’ve written today. What things did you notice that you feel could be represented by data? What things could not?

Scholars, such as Andrew Shail, have argued that Woolf’s representation of the present is due to her exposure to film — that rewinding, pausing, and slow motion effects in Mrs. Dalloway are related to how film changed people’s experience of time.

Check out one second on Twitter. What kind of complexity is represented here? How do you feel that data is changing our experience of time?

Attendance Activity (10 minutes)

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?

Preparation (20 minutes)

Get three memes connected to a social or political issue. Consider three elements of each of the three memes you selected:

• who is the intended audience for the meme? consider how a different audience would read the meme differently.
• what is the primary purpose of the meme? secondary? Example: the primary purpose might be humorous, but it might be humorous in order to reference an idea that is serious. Be as specific as possible.
• what appeals does the meme use?
  • Logical: Is there a particular set of premises that are either stated or implied?
  • Pathos: Are there elements of anger? of sadness? to the meme? Other emotions that are deliberately or accidentally inspired?
  • Ethos: How does the meme reference and adapt the original source that it cites?

Presentations (40 minutes; Groups of 4). I’ll move from one group to another.

Attendance Activity (10 minutes)

Pick something out of your pocket, purse, or bag and share with the group why it’s important to you.

Think, Pair, Share and Activity (40 Minutes)

In “Introducing the Curator’s Code,” Maria Popova argues that curation is one way to manage information overload, on the one hand; and be ethical about our research, on the other.

It’s a suggested system for honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery by making attribution consistent and codified, celebrating authors and creators, and also respecting those who discover and amplify their work. It’s an effort to make the rabbit hole open, fair, and ever-alluring.

1. How do you share or retweet a post that comes from someone else?
2. How do you share a photo that someone else took?
3. How do you note that you might not agree with the person whose article you share?

Activity (20 minutes)

Now, pick a social meme that references politics in some way. You may find it on Reddit’s page, Memegen, Memegenerator, or Know Your Meme.

Change the meme in some way, perhaps to create your own joke or to produce some new insight. Publish that meme on our blog and cite the meme according to Popova’s Curator’s Code.

What are your thoughts on using the curator’s code? Is it something that might be easy enough to be broadly adopted as a standard?

For Thursday: Bring 3 memes that you’ve created and are planning on using in your second project.

Featured Image: “Curators Code” ᔥ Kelli Anderson

Attendance Activity (10 Minutes)

The beginning of Black Mirror mentions a new form of litigation they call “retrospective parenting cases.” The idea would be “Bobby sues mum and dad for insufficient attention leading to lack of confidence, leading to damages against earnings.” Apparently, since you can review your entire life, you can gauge exactly how long your parents spent time with you against what is recommended by psychologists or legally mandated. Is this something that’s ethical? not ethical? Is this different from being sued or losing a job due to something you said on social media?

Black Mirror Discussion (30 minutes)

There are a lot of ways to discuss what happened in the Black Mirror episode, but here are a few questions to get us started:

1. Consider the following quote from Slavoj Zizek:

Let’s say that you are married and you are pathologically jealous, thinking that your wife is sleeping around with other men. And let’s say that you are totally right, she is cheating. Lacan says that your jealousy is still pathological. Even if everything is true it is pathological, because what makes it pathological is not the fact that is it true or not true, but why you invest so much in it—what needs does it fulfill?

According to this, it is the obsession that makes Liam’s jealousies pathological, not whether or not they are correct. What makes Liam so jealous in the episode.

Does checking online statuses make us similarly pathological? Is there a connection between Liam’s jealousy in the episode and our need to constantly check email or worry about whether someone is going to write us back on social media?

2. This week, Obama announced ambitions to colonize Mars. But scientists said that the radiation derived from such a trip might damage the brains of would-be astronauts.

The researchers […] discovered that the radiation affected the part of the brain that normally suppresses prior unpleasant and stressful associations, as part of a process called “fear extinction.” This loss of fear extinction could make the astronauts prone to anxiety, Limoli said.

What role does forgetting have in human health? If we’re forced to remember everything immediately, what might be the consequences?

Think, Pair, Share and Activity (40 Minutes)

In “Introducing the Curator’s Code,” Maria Popova argues that curation is one way to manage information overload, on the one hand; and be ethical about our research, on the other.

It’s a suggested system for honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery by making attribution consistent and codified, celebrating authors and creators, and also respecting those who discover and amplify their work. It’s an effort to make the rabbit hole open, fair, and ever-alluring.

What standards do you employ when talking about where a link or an image came from? Why might those standards matter?

Now, pick a social meme that references politics in some way. You may find it on Reddit’s page, Memegen, Memegenerator, or Know Your Meme.

Change the meme in some way, perhaps to create your own joke or to produce some new insight. Publish that meme on our blog and cite the meme according to Popova’s Curator’s Code.

What are your thoughts on using the curator’s code? Is it something that might be easy enough to be broadly adopted as a standard?

Reminder: #BlackLivesMatter Symposium Tomorrow!

67 extra credit points for attending at least one talk and writing a one-paragraph summary by midnight next Tuesday night!

Attendance Activity (10 minutes)

What’s currently your favorite meme?

Project 2: Social Media (10 minutes)

DUE: 10/25/2016

Objectives: Analyze the political significance of memes; curate and track their contexts.

Determine: Decide on a social issue represented by a popular meme, like #BlackLivesMatter, Immigration, etc. Find memes on Reddit, Memegen, Memegenerator, and Know Your Meme.

Curate: At least 10 different variations. Analyze rhetoric (audience, purpose appeals). Post the memes and your analysis on your WordPress site. Is the meme funny? serious? original? derivative?

Contextualize: Aritculate the media and cultural contexts of the memes you highlight. How do these contexts relate? Where do they come from?
Connect: Compare your findings to the ideas in the boyd interview or in Rushkoff. Use curatorscode.org to attribute your memes and your references. Written portion should be at least 60 words per entry or 600 words total.

Grading: Grading is individually-assigned for this project and determined based upon the rubric posted below.

Rubric (50 pts per row; 200 total).

Needs Work (15)	Criteria	Exceeds Standards (25)
	Analysis Discussion of audience, purpose, appeals.
	Curation: Use of curatorscode.org, organization of curation.
	Tracking: Discussion of the contexts where the meme appears.
	Context: Connections made to course readings and concepts.

Think, Pair, Share (20 minutes)

Check out Red Feed / Blue Feed. List five striking things that you found.

Now, check your own newsfeed and share with your group and the larger class what your top three stories are. Make sure you look for stories that reference some national, political, or social event - i.e. the election, the hurricane, Louisiana Floods, or the recent shooting, not celebrity or sports news. Quickly scan the article and take note of how it is written.

Discussion (20 minutes)

Consider the following quotes and questions:

Zeynep Tufekci, “The Real Bias Built In at Facebook.” The New York Times. 19 May 2025

Algorithms are often presented as an extension of natural sciences like physics or biology. While these algorithms also use data, math and computation, they are a fountain of bias and slants — of a new kind.

If a bridge sways and falls, we can diagnose that as a failure, fault the engineering, and try to do better next time. If Google shows you these 11 results instead of those 11, or if a hiring algorithm puts this person’s résumé at the top of a file and not that one, who is to definitively say what is correct, and what is wrong? Without laws of nature to anchor them, algorithms used in such subjective decision making can never be truly neutral, objective or scientific.

Refer to the five things you noted from “Red Feed / Blue Feed.” How do algorithms create bias?

Zeynep Tufekci, “What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson.” Medium. 14 August 2014.

But maybe in the future, they don’t have to bother to arrest journalists and force cameras off. In California, legislation is being considered for “kill switches” in phones — a feature I honestly cannot imagine a good use for this in the United States.

The citizen journalists held on, even as choked from the gas, some traditional media started going live from the region, and today, it’s on the front page of many newspapers.

Maybe, just maybe, there can be a national conversation on these topics long-ignored outside these communities. That’s not everything: it may be a first step, or it may get drowned out.

Freedom of the press is so important to American democracy because it is assumed that the press can educate the public, and thus make them informed voters. But if private companies (like Facebook or Twitter) can control how information appears to you on their sites, what is the role of the news media now? How will we ever know about the ideas or questions of people who aren’t like us?

Featured Image: #BlackLivesMatter Symposium Poster by Michael Wynne

Reminder: #BlackLivesMatter Symposium on Friday

Note: If you go to at least one talk at the #BlackLivesMatter symposium and write a paragraph on the blog summarizing the talk and your thoughts on it, you will receive 67 extra credit points, which means that you can either just have the extra points or skip one of upcoming blog assignments.

Attendance Assignment (10 minutes)

Have you ever been shamed, bullied, or had your identity turned against you online? What was it like?

Talk About the First Blog (10 minutes)

Social Media: Identities: Due 10/11 by midnight.

Action: Google yourself and review your social media profiles. Choose 3 social media profiles and/or Google results to examine more closely.

Reflection: Introduce us to your digital self: who are you on social media? Who do you want to be? While some of you will have more material than others, all of you can begin building a plan for how you want to be perceived on social media. 600 words. @ least 1 CC-BY Image

Connect: Your conclusions meaningfully to the boyd interview, Rushkoff, or Black Mirror.

Think, Pair Share (40 minutes)

Complete the Platform Map and Social Media Sharing handouts with a partner.

1. Platform Map
   • What is your identity on these various platforms?
   • On Instagram I’m usually taking pictures at the gym and making jokes about their questions. On Twitter, I’m usually professional b/c I’m tweeting to other scholars. On Facebook, I’m usually more family / geeky because I have both family and friends on there.
   • How do your nieces and nephews, parents, grandparents, friends, or teachers or other adult acquaintances use these various platforms?
2. Social Media Sharing
   • Look at two separate posts from one of the platforms you mentioned on the other side. Note: Who are you writing to? What are you communicating? What are you keeping to yourself?

Create a map of generational sharing on the whiteboard.

Discussion

Consider the following quotes from the reading. From Rushkoff’s Program or Be Programmed:

Of course we should all keep our bank accounts and personal information private; but our posts, our participation, and socializing? That really should be coming from us, ourselves. The less we take responsibility for what we say and do online, the more likely we are to behave in ways that reflect our worst natures—or even the worst nature of others. Because digital technology is biased toward depersonalization, we must make an effort not to operate anonymously, unless absolutely necessary. We must be ourselves.

Facebook requires that you use your real name. This is a different policy than the ones on myspace, Twitter, and other online sites. What responsibility do you feel we have, if any, towards the things we say online? Consider this in light of the various reasons and purposes you communicate online.

danah boyd from “Why You Shouldn’t Stalk Your Kid Online”

The moves educators have made away from using social media to talk to kids have been really destructive. Educators should have open-door policies for kids to reach out to them online. A teacher should create a profile that is herself or himself as a teacher, on Facebook or wherever your cohort of kids are. Never go and friend a student on your own, but if a student friends you, accept. And if a student reaches out to you online, respond. If you see something concerning about a student on a social media account, approach him or her in school. Give your password to the principal, so it’s all transparent, and then be present. Unfortunately, I hear a lot of teachers say they shouldn’t talk to kids outside the classroom. You can’t be 24/7, but when that connection is possible, it should be encouraged. And social media is an opportunity for more informal interactions.

boyd’s context is high school, but analogous arguments could be made about college. What are the various policies teachers have made in your classes regarding social media? Which do you think are fair? More or less effective? How do you prefer to talk to teachers online?