Politics of the Digital

Assignment 2

Write a paper of at least 1500 words on ONE of the following prompts, or on another topic related to the course. Word count (available in all word processors), rather than page length, is the The topic can be analytical or reports on material related to but not covered in the course, but should consult via email with me (dgolumbia-at-vcu.edu) while developing your topic. You are encouraged to fulfill these requirements through alternate projects (video, audio, games, etc.) that are determined in advance by consulting the instructor.

Specific Prompts

• The early dreams of the internet we studied in the first part of the term, for example Barlow's "Declaration of the Independent of Cyberspace," frequently talked about the internet being a place where human qualities like race and gender would not matter. How were these claims received at the time (that is, the 1980s and 1990s) by women and people of color? How are they understood today? What does this discussion presume about the way race and gender are experienced in the world? You might want to do some research into the 1990s idea of "cyberfeminism" to see how advocates of that view thought about this question.
• In Dark Matters, Simone Browne draws attention to surveillance practices that predate digital technology, and their central role in establishing our ideas about race and the norms and laws we use to regulate race. Can you think of ways in which "social surveillance" of the kind found in various forms of social media serves a similar function to the ones Browne talks about? Use specific examples from Browne and specific examples from contemporary social media.
• Do some research about how social media is sometimes categorized or segregated by race and/or gender. What do some scholars and commentators suggest might be the reasons for this segregation? Does it matter if the segregation is intentional on the part of a specific social media site's creators?
• Several of tech essays we have read echo a very well-known claim that social media can be emancipatory or politically important for racial or gendered minorities. Beyond the surface fact that social media can be used by virtually anyone and so can help virtually anyone, use some specific examples to assess ways in which specific social media platforms or events might both help and hurt those minorities. One approach would be to read suggestions for minorities to use social media to help themselves, from the perspective of someone who strongly disagrees with those causes, and to ask how the same techniques might be used not to help but to hurt. Can techniques to "empower" people with social media be designed so as to only "empower" people whose politics we like? How might this be done, and what phenomena make it difficult?
• Research the phenomenon called "Black Twitter." What is it and what are some examples of it? What perspectives do you see around this topic with regard to the usefulness of social media for minorities?
• How has the idea of "civil rights," especially with regard to women and African-Americans, changed in the period from the 1960s through today? Are they the same kinds of things? Use one or more concrete examples of similar or different civil rights from different historical periods.
• Consider some movies and/or novels that have depicted "humanoid" robots or artificial intelligences (that is, robots or AI that are depicted as human beings). Think about the race and/or gender of those robots or AI in relation to the overall plot. This paper should be an interpretation of the meaning of the film or novel (or TV show, etc.) in terms of digital technology and the race/gender of the character in question.

Submission of Assignments

Please submit your assignment in the "Paper 2 " selection under Assignments in Blackboard.

General Paper Instructions

The essay should be 5 to 6 pages in length, but please use your word processor to count the number of words; word count and not page length is the official metric for the assignment. An English paper should include quotations from the work you are analyzing, and short quotations DO count toward the total word count for the essay. Long quotations (of 50 or more words) should not generally be counted toward the 1500 word total for the assignment.

This is not a research paper, and you are not expected to consult outside sources except for the primary book or piece of media you choose to interpret. 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. Refer to assignment 1 for information on some correct ways to cite material for the paper.

This is not primarily a research paper, and you do not need to consult outside sources except for the primary book or piece of media you choose to interpret. However, you are also very welcome to include secondary and primary sources of any kind that relate to the assignment and the course material. 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.

For convenience, here are some citations from readings for another course. For works other than movies, articles, or books, just do your best: the point is to indicate where you got material that is not written by you; I am less concerned with the exact form your citation takes than I am with the attempt to provide a citation. This includes Wikipedia entries, one of which is included below.

Within the paper, you would cite things this way:

One critic says that "surveillance is always at work, whether we know it or not" (Andrejevic, "The Work of Watching One Another," p. 34).

A Wikipedia entry might be cited like this:

Morrison "went to Howard University graduating in 1953 with a B.A. in English; she went on to earn a Master of Arts from Cornell University in 1955" ("Toni Morrison," Wikipedia).

Works Cited

Mark Andrejevic, "The Work of Watching One Another: Lateral Surveillance, Risk, and Governance." Surveillance & Society 2:4 (2004). 479-497.
Julia Angwin, "It's Complicated: Facebook's History of Tracking You." ProPublica (Jun 17, 2014). http://www.propublica.org/article/its-complicated-facebooks-history-of-tracking-you.
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, "The Californian Ideology." Mute 3 (Autumn 1995).
Adam Curtis, dir. All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. Three Parts. United Kingdom: BBC, 2011.
"Toni Morrison." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison. Accessed Feb 2, 2016.

Other standard forms of citation (such as footnotes) are also acceptable, but failing to properly indicate sources technically constitutes plagiarism.

Last updated October 26, 2017.