ENGL 391 (Section 901, Schedule #29187)
Virginia Commonwealth University
Spring 2014
MW 5:30-6:45pm :: 331 Hibbs
Prof. David Golumbia
Office: 324D Hibbs Hall
Spr 2014 Office Hours: Tues 1-3:30pm

Digital Studies

Assignment 1

Each student will write two papers of 6-8 pages (2000 words) on topics related to the main course subject. The default assignment is an analytical paper, but I encourage you to work with me and the other students to find other ways to meet this requirement for the course. The paper is due by the end of the day on Wednesday, Mar 26. You may submit the assignment on paper, or electronically via email, or by posting your project online and sending me the URL.

Please use your word processor to count the number of words.

You may also choose to prepare an assignment that is not a traditional paper. Examples of such assignments would include videos, social media profiles/experiments, games or game prototypes, or any other mode of expression that allows you to comment on the topics we are studying in the course from a critical or analytical perspective. All non-traditional assignments must have been pre-approved by the instructor via email in order to be accepted for credit.

This is not a research paper, and you are not expected to consult outside sources except for the primary piece of media you choose to interpret. However, it must still follow proper research citation form: any sources, including that primary source, should be properly cited in your paper, using any acceptable bibliographic citation format. One very simple format is to use a list of Works Cited at the end of the paper, and indicate by author, work and page number in parentheses the exact quotations within the paper itself. Other standard forms of citation (such as footnotes) are also acceptable, but failing to properly indicate sources technically constitutes plagiarism. In most cases, the only work cited will be the primary text you analyze; nevertheless, that work should be clearly cited. In some cases the prompts below invite you to write on two primary texts, or one primary text and one of the critical texts we read at the beginning of the term; regardless, every work you reference that is not your own writing should be clearly and unambiguously sourced via a consistent citation format in your paper.

All work for this assignment and the rest of this course is expected to be your own, and should not include elements from other sources (such as online commentaries on the works you write about), unless you also put them in quotation marks and clearly indicate your sources as described above.

Your essay should address one of the following questions. In general, you should work to develop your own argument, one independent of specific points or analyses raised during class discussion. It's OK and probably unavoidable to reflect some of what we talk about in class, but in general you should do your best to develop an independent topic that shows of your own reasoning.

Prompts

  1. Discuss one of the arguments made in one of the chapters in the book Misunderstanding the Internet, and apply those arguments to a part of digital culture different from those discussed in the book.
  2. Find an example of a rumor or other kind of false information that spread on a digital platform recently. Discuss how this spread is different from (and the same as) the spread of information in other media.
  3. In the segment of All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace we watched, filmmaker Adam Curtis discussed a deep biological metaphor ("ecosystem") that remains very active in digital culture, despite being largely disproven in the area to which it formally applies. Identify a specific metaphor (different from the one Curtis uses) that is applied to some aspect of digital culture. It might be a metaphor from biology or from something else. Discuss how that metaphor drives behavior, and how the metaphor may and may not actually apply to the phenomenon which it is used to describe.
  4. Discuss a particular instance of "hacktivism" or other online activism. How is it similar to and different from other forms of activism?
  5. Find a specific instance of "trolling" in an online comment or discussion thread and analyze how the trolling affects the participants in the discussion and the outcome of the issues discussed.
  6. Other than a phone, discuss a digital technology that has impact on in-person communication. Focus in on one or two examples of this technology changing face-to-face behavior and discuss the consequences of these changes.

Last updated March 10, 2014.