time	monday 3:30pm-5:30pm
place	202 south hall
professor	warren sack
email	cmc-prof@sims.berkeley.edu
office hours	monday noon-2:00
tutor	nicolas ducheneaut
email	cmc-tutor@sims.berkeley.edu
office hours	wednesday 10:00am-noon
course email list	cmc@sims.berkeley.edu
course web site	www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is290-1/s01/
description	this is a graduate-level introduction to computer-mediated communication (cmc).  cmc is communication between people using applications such as email, newsgroups, chat, muds, and 3d virtual worlds.  this course is concerned with the design and implementation of such applications and the analysis of cmc practices and social formations that emerge when people use these applications.  topics include aesthetic, ethical, artistic, architectural, and computational criteria for the design and implementation of cmc systems; and the social, political, linguistic, historical, and philosophical analysis of existing and emerging cmc.  online communities will be our focus this term.
requirements	students will be required to (1) produce a final project: students can choose to work in groups or to work alone.  the project can be to either (a) implement a new cmc system; or, (b) analyze how people use an existing cmc system.  students looking for or currently pursuing a thesis topic will be enouraged to use the course as a means to further the thesis work. a project proposal will be due early in the semester and an interium report will due midway through the term.  those who choose to implement a new cmc system will be required to write a short (<=5 page) paper; document the code written for the project; and give a ten minute oral presentation at the end of the term.  those who choose to analyze an existing cmc system will be asked to write a journal-length paper (20-30 pages); and give a ten minute oral presentation at the end of the term.  in the project proposals, students will identify a potential conference or journal that will determine the style and content of the final project paper.  project proposal should also contain a list of references identifying existing related work. (2) summarize and elaborate on three of the required readings: students will choose three of the required readings.  For each chosen reading, the student will compose a one page summary.  in addition to the summary, the student will identify and list three books, articles, websites, or code archives that constitute related work.  for each of these related works, the student will compose a one or two sentence description of the work.  students will upload their summaries to the course website so that all class members will be able to read them.  students who summarize a reading will be required to give an oral account of their summary in class during the discussion of the reading.
grading criteria	class participation 10% summaries 3 summaries * 10% 30% final project 60% project proposal: 5% interium project report: 5% paper or paper+code+documentation: 40% final presentation: 10%
required readings	books armand mattelart & michele mattelart,  theories of communication: a short introduction (thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, 1998) benedict anderson, imagined communities: on the origin and spread of nationalism, revised edition (new york: verso, 1991) lynn cherny, conversation and community: discourse in a social mud (cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1999) marc a. smith and peter kollock (editors) communities in cyberspace (new york: routledge, 1999) the books listed above can be purchased either: (a) at the cal bookstore in the textbook department; and/or, (b) through the simians student organization (click on the hyperlinked titles for more information).   course reader a collection of xeroxed articles are available as a reader that can be purchased from copy central on bancroft.   online articles the online articles are available for download at the urls hyperlinked in the readings listed below.
resources	throughout the term we will be collecting pointers to code archives, websites, books, and articles.  these will be resources for better understanding the assigned readings and for finding related work for the final projects.  the resource list can be accessed through this link: resources.

 
 
 

schedule

date	topic	readings
22 jan	introduction
29 jan	theories of communication	armand mattelart & michele mattelart,  theories of communication: a short introduction
wed., 06 feb	theories of community	benedict anderson, imagined communities: on the origin and spread of nationalism [summaries for chapters 1+2+3] [summaries for chapters 4+5+6] [summaries for chapters 7+8+9] [summaries for chapters 10+11]
12 feb	identity and difference	manuel castells, "communal heavens: identity and meaning in the network society" in the course reader [summaries] judith donath,  "identity and deception in the virtual community," in smith and kollock [summaries] byron burkhalter, "reading race online:  discovering racial identity in usenet discussions," in smith and kollock [summaries] jodi o'brien, "writing in the body: gender (re)production in online interaction," in smith and kollock [summaries] susan herring, deborah johnson, tamra dibenedetto, "this discussion is going too far!:  male resistance to female participation on the internet" in the course reader [summaries]
wed., 21 feb	speech communities	project proposal due lynn cherny, conversation and community: discourse in a social mud [summaries for chapters 1+2+3] [summaries for chapters 4+5] [summaries for chapters 6+7]
26 feb	social networks	marc smith, "invisible crowds in cyberspace: mapping the social structure of the the usenet" in smith and kollock [summaries] barry wellman and milena gulia, "virtual communities as communities: net surfers don't ride alone" in smith and kollock [summaries] laura garton, caroline haythornthwaite and barry wellman, "studying on-line social networks" online [summaries] ronald e. rice, "network analysis and computer-mediated communication systems" in the course reader [summaries]
05 mar	community knowledge	geneviéve teil and bruno latour, "the hume machine: can association networks do more than formal rules?" online [summaries] harry m. collins, "humans, machines, and the structure of knowledge" online [summaries] john paolillo, "the virtual speech community: social network and language variation on irc" online [summaries] mark s. ackerman "augmenting organizational memory: a field study of answer garden" online [summaries] robin burke, kristian hammond, vladimir kulyukin,  steven lytinen, noriko tomuro and scott schoenberg "natural language processing in the faq finder system: results and prospects" online [summaries] warren sack "conversation map: a content-based usenet newsgroup browser" online [summaries]
12 mar	orders of discourse	kent bach "speech acts" online [summaries] fernando flores, michael graves, brad hartfield and terry winograd "computer systems and the design of organizational interactions" online [summaries] lucy suchman "do categories have politics?" in the course reader [summaries] nicolas ducheneaut and victoria bellotti "a study of email work processes in three organizations" online [summaries]
19 mar	collective action	alberto mellucci, "the construction of collective action" in the course reader [summaries] manuel castells, "the other face of the earth: social movements against the new global order" in the course reader [summaries] laura j. gurak, "the promise and the peril of social action in cyberspace: ethos, delivery, and the protests over marketplace and the clipper chip" in smith and kollock  [summaries] willard uncapher, "electronic homesteading on the rural frontier:  big sky telegraph and its community" in smith and kollock [summaries] christopher mele, "cyberspace and disadvantaged communities:  the internet as a tool for collective action" in smith and kollock [summaries]
26 mar	spring break	no meeting
02 apr	roles and interaction	intermediate project reports due gerald prince "role" in the course reader gerald prince "function" in the course reader erving goffman "footing" in the course reader [summaries] erving goffman "the self and social roles" in the course reader [summaries] erving goffman "social life as drama" in the course reader [summaries] harry brod "masculinity as masquerade" in the course reader [summaries] alan  wexelblatt "an auteur in the age of the internet: jms, babylon 5, and the net" online [summaries]
09 apr	embodiment	george lakoff and mark johnson "orientational metaphors" in the course reader sandy stone, "will the real body please stand up?" online [summaries] bruce damer "alphaworld and active worlds" in the course reader [summaries] jennifer gonzalez "the appended subject" in the course reader [summaries] dean h. krikorian, jae-shin lee, t. makana chock and chad harms "isn't that spatial?: distance and communication in a 2-d virtual environment"  online [summaries] jim hollan and scott stornetta "beyond being there" online [summaries] john canny online [summaries]
16 apr	time	john hassard "the sociological study of time" in the course reader [summaries] pitirim sorokin and robert merton "social-time: a methodological and functional analysis" in the course reader [summaries] nigel thrift "the making of a capitalist time consciousness" in the course reader [summaries] marshall mcluhan "clocks: the scent of time" in the course reader [summaries] martin dodge and rob kitchin "temporal aspects of icts" in the course reader leysia palen "social, Individual and technological Issues for groupware calendar systems"  online [summaries] noel burch "spatial and temporal articulations" in the course reader [summaries]
23 apr	space	bill hillier and julienne hanson "introduction: the social logic of space" in the course reader [summaries] martin dodge and rob kitchin "theorizing space" in the course reader martin dodge and rob kitchin "mapping asynchronous media" in the course reader [summaries] martin dodge and rob kitchin "mapping synchronous social spaces" in the course reader [summaries] noel burch "nana, or the two kinds of space" in the course reader [summaries] matthew jackson, anne h. anderson, rachel mcewan, jim mullin "impact of video frame rate on communicative behavior in two and four party groups" online [summaries] per persson "understanding representations of space:  a comparison of visual techniques in mainstream cinema and computer interfaces" in the course reader [summaries]
30 apr	democracy	joachim aastroem "should democracy online be quick, strong, or thin?" online [summaries] doug schuler "computer professionals and the next culture of democracy" online [summaries] cathy bryan, roza tsagarousianou and damian tambini "electronic democracy and the civic networking movement in context" in the course reader [summaries] sharon docter and william h. dutton "the first amendment online: santa monica's public electronic network" in the course reader [summaries] matthew hale, juliet musso and christopher weare "developing digital democracy: evidence from californian municipal web pages" in the course reader [summaries]
07 may	student presentations