S543: Computer-Mediated Communication

 

Semester:

Spring 2010

Instructor:

Susan Herring

Time:

Monday 1:00-3:45 p.m.

Office:

LI 037

Place:

LI 030

Phone:

(812) 856-4919 (voice mail)

Section:

30775

Email:

herring @ indiana.edu

Instructor's Office Hours: M & Th 4-5 p.m. and by appointment

Class discussion list: cmc-l @ indiana.edu


 

Required Readings:

Articles to be made available on e-reserves, Oncourse, or on the public Web.

 

1.  Course Description

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the human-to-human interaction that takes place via computer networks such as the Internet, as well as via mobile digital media. Invented in the 1960s and expanded initially over the Arpanet (the precursor of the Internet), CMC has grown at a dizzying rate over the past five decades to become as ubiquitous as such taken-for-granted communication technologies as radio, the telephone, and television.

Historically, most CMC was (and is still) text-based; examples include email, mailing lists, web forums, chat, MUDs, Instant Messaging, text messaging (SMS), blogs, microblogs, and wikis. In the mid-1990s, multimodal CMC also became important, in the form of video chat, audio chat, and graphical virtual worlds—and, of course, the World Wide Web. Recently, there is a trend for CMC to converge with other media applications, such as social network sites, video sharing, multiplayer online games, and interactive television.

This course provides a graduate-level overview of CMC, with a dual focus on CMC use (especially its adoption and social consequences) and the design features of CMC systems that affect user behavior. Course content includes the history of the Arpanet/Internet; classification of CMC types; key CMC theories and debates; community formation and antisocial behavior online; language use online; CMC applications; and communication in convergent media technologies.

              

The goal of the course is to create an interactive learning community around the theme of computer-mediated communication. We will read, discuss, and critique claims and findings from classic and contemporary research on a variety of CMC modes, including email, discussion forums, webboards, chat rooms, instant messaging, graphical virtual worlds, video chat, blogs, wikis, and social network sites. We will also use different CMC modes in the process of learning about them. The course is roughly chronologically organized, such that older CMC technologies are discussed first, and newer technologies are discussed as the semester advances.

 

2.  Course Objectives

As a result of completing this course, you should gain:

 

    a historical perspective on the development of the Internet and CMC

    familiarity with different modes of CMC

    a theoretically-grounded, critical understanding of the nature of CMC and its social and technical effects in different contexts of use          

    skill in summarizing and synthesizing concepts from published scholarship

 

3.  Course Requirements

 

Readings:  You are expected to read the assigned readings and participate in online discussions about them (using LiveJournal blogs) each week. Each participant in the course will create a LiveJournal and add the other participants as their "friends." Every week, one person will post a summary (2-3 paragraphs, briefly encapsulating each article's main claims) for each assigned reading on their LJ, and everyone else will post one or more comments on the summaries, engaging with the content of the readings. The discussions in LJ will help prepare you for class discussions, the final exam, and will provide feedback that will help me conduct the course in ways that better meet your interests and needs.

 

Exams:  There will be a final, essay-type (take-home) comprehensive exam. The exam questions will be of a synthetic nature, requiring you to draw together, relate, and apply key concepts from the readings and class discussions. A review of key concepts will take place before the exam.

 

Term paper (OPTIONAL). Instead of taking the final exam, you may write a 4000-6500 word term paper (excluding appendices) reporting on the results of original research on CMC in a mode and setting of your choice. This need not be a type of CMC we have discussed in the course; it can be any type of CMC you are interested in (providing you can get reasonable and ethical access to it). However, the analysis should relate to issues discussed in the course. Students wishing to write a term paper instead of taking the final exam should submit a one-page proposal by week 10 identifying the topic, research question, methods, data and preliminary observations on which the paper will be based. The final paper should follow the formal conventions for a publishable-quality research article, including footnotes and citations of scholarly work in APA (American Psychological Association) style.

 

There is a email distribution list for this course (cmc-l @ indiana.edu). You are expected to check your email at least twice between class meetings, including the morning before class for last-minute announcements and reminders. Participation on the email list is encouraged, although it is not a requirement of the course.

 

4.  Grading

 

Your grade for the course will be calculated as follows:

 

Class participation

25%

LJ reading summaries and discussions

35%

Final exam OR term paper

40%

                                             Total:

100%

 

 

Grading policy:

 

    Late LJ comments will be accepted once during the semester, no questions asked, provided they are posted within two days after the class meeting in which the readings were discussed.

    Class participation and LJ summaries and discussions will be graded with a check mark for each class meeting, to indicate that the requirement was met. Class participation means being willing and prepared to speak intelligently in class about the topics under discussion. (Note: this does not necessarily mean speaking a lot—you may be penalized if you habitually dominate class discussions.) In order to be able to speak intelligently about a topic, you will need to have done the readings for that topic. You will also need to be physically present and alert.

    The exam and the term paper will be assigned letter grades (A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, etc.).

    The exam will be graded on quality (depth and accuracy) of understanding of key concepts; ability to extend, apply and relate concepts beyond what was discussed in class; appropriate citation of sources; and clarity and organization of written presentation.

    The term paper (if you choose this option) will be graded on content—originality of the research question, appropriateness of the data and methods used to investigate the question, plausibility of your interpretations—and form—organization, clarity and quality of written expression, and appropriate use of scholarly conventions such as citations and footnotes. An 'A' quality term paper addresses an interesting research question, makes use of an appropriate empirical method to analyze real CMC data, and interprets the findings thoughtfully, in addition to being well-organized and clearly and professionally written.

 

Note:  Learning is a collaborative enterprise. However, plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other types of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. To help you recognize plagiarism, the IU Writing Center has prepared a short guide: Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It. Please read this guide and refer to it when you produce your written assignments for this course.



 

Tentative Schedule of Readings and Discussions

(Subject to change with advance notice)

 

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Week 1 (1/11):

Introduction to computer-mediated communication. CMC types.

 

Read:

1. Herring, S. C. (2002). Computer-mediated communication and the Internet. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 36, 109-132. http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/arist.2002.pdf [read only up to "Early Claims About CMC Revisited"]

2. Herring, S. C. (2007). A faceted classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse. Language@Internet. http://www.languageatinternet.de/articles/2007/761/index_html

(No LJ discussions will be held for these articles, but you should create an LJ before the first class meeting and introduce yourself on it.)

 

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MLK Jr. day (1/18):        NO CLASS

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Week 2 (1/25):

The origins and evolution of computer-mediated communication.

 

Read:

(Choose 3)


1. Licklider J. C. R. & Taylor, R. W. (1968). The computer as a communication device. International Science and Technology, April. http://memex.org/licklider.pdf [article starts on p. 21]

2. Hafner, K. & Lyon, M. (1996). E-mail. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. [e-reserves]

3. Rheingold, H. (1993). Chapter 4: Grassroots groupminds. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/4.html

4. Berners-Lee, T. (1996). The World Wide Web: Past, present and future.
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/1996/ppf.html

5. Herring, S. C. (2004). Slouching toward the ordinary: Current trends in computer-mediated communication. New Media & Society, 6 (1), 26-36. http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/com482/herring(2004).pdf

 

Explore:

 

Google Groups; The Wayback Machine

 

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Week 3 (2/1):

Theories about the effects of CMC. Information exchange vs.
socio-emotional expression. What is CMC good (or bad) for?

 

Read:

(Choose 3)


1. Daft, R. & Lengel, R. (1984). Information richness: A new approach to managerial behavior and organization design. Research in Organizational Behavior
, vol. 6, 191-233. [e-reserves]

2. Kiesler, S. et al. (1984). Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. American Psychologist, 39, 1123-34. [e-reserves]

3. Rice, R., & Love, G. (1987). Electronic emotion: Socioemotional content in a computer-mediated network. Communication Research, 14, 85-108. [e-reserves]

4. Walther, J. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23(1), 3-43. [e-reserves]

5. Postmes, T., Spears, R., & Lea, M. (1998). Breaching or building social boundaries? SIDE-effects of computer-mediated communication. Communication Research, 25/6, 689-715. [Oncourse]

6. Kraut, R., Lundmark, V., Patterson, M., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet Paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? American Psychologist, 53/9, 1017-1031. [Oncourse]

7. Dennis, A. R., & Valacich, J. S. (1999). Rethinking media richness: Towards a theory of media synchronicity. HICSS-32. [Oncourse]


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Week 4 (2/8):

Online community.


Read:

(Choose 3)

1. Rheingold, H. (1993). Introduction & Chapter 1: The Heart of the Well. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/

2. Fernback, J., & Thompson, B. (1995). Virtual communities: Abort, retry, failure? http://www.well.com/user /hlr/texts/VCcivil.html

3. Preece, J., & Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003). Online communities. In J. Jacko & A. Sears (Eds.), Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 596-620). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Preprint: http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/~preece/paper/7%20Handbook%20v1.7Final.pdf

4. McLure Wasko, M., & Faraj, S. (2005, March). Why should I share?  Examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice. MISQ, 29, 35-57. [Oncourse]

5. Boyd, J. (2002). In community we trust: Online security communication at eBay. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 7(3). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue3/boyd.html

6. Brown, R. (2001).  Process of community-building in distance learning
classes. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2). [Oncourse]


Demonstration:

A social MUD

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Week 5 (2/15):

Computer-mediated language.

 

Read:

(Choose 3)


1. Crystal, D. (2006). Chapter 2: The medium of Netspeak. Language and the Internet, 2nd ed. (pp. 26-65). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Oncourse]


2. Thurlow, C. (2006). From statistical panic to moral panic: The metadiscursive construction and popular exaggeration of new media language in the print media. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(3), article 1. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue3/thurlow.html


3.
Baron, N. S. (1998). Letters by phone or speech by other means: The linguistics of e-mail. Language and Communication, 18, 133-170. [Oncourse - there are three files for this article]


4. Werry, C. (1996). Linguistic and interactional features of Internet Relay Chat. In S. C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [Oncourse]


5.
Herring, S. C., & Zelenkauskaite, A. (2009). Symbolic capital in a virtual heterosexual market: Abbreviation and insertion in Italian iTV SMS. Written Communication, 26(1), 5-31. http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~ herring/wc.2009.pdf

 

Demonstration:

 

Internet Relay Chat


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Week 6 (2/22):

Gender, race, culture.

Read:

(choose 3)

1. Herring, S. C. (1993). Gender and democracy in computer-mediated communication. Electronic Journal of Communication, 3(2). http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/ejc.txt

2. Koch, S. C., Mueller, B., Kruse, L., & Zumbach, J. (2005). Constructing gender in chat groups. Sex Roles, 53(1/2), 29-41. [Oncourse]

3. Nakamura, L. (2002). Head-hunt ing on the Internet: Identity tourism, avatars, and racial passing in textual an d graphic chat spaces. Chapter 2, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (pp. 31-60). NY: Routledge. [Oncourse]

4. Burkhalter, B. (1999). Reading race online. In M. Smith & P. Kollock (Eds.), Communities in Cyberspace. [Oncourse]

5. Pargman, D. (1998). Reflections on cultural bias and adaptation. In C. Ess & F. Sudweeks (Eds.), Proceedings Cultural Attitudes Towards Communication and Technology, 98 (pp. 81-91). University of Sydney, Australia. [Oncourse]

6. Gunewardena, C. N., Wilson, P. L., & Nolla, A. C. (2003). Culture and online education. In M. G. Moore & W. G. Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of Distance Education (pp. 753-776). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [Oncourse]


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Week 7 (3/1):

Anonymity, deception, and trust.


Read:

(choose 3)

1. Van Gelder, L. (1985). The strange case of the electronic lover. Ms. Magazine, October. [Oncourse]

2. Donath, J. (1999). Identity and deception in the virtual community. In
M. Smith & P. Kollock (Eds.), Communities in Cyberspace. [Oncourse]

3. Bowker, N., & Tuffin, K. (2003). Dicing with deception: People with disabilities' strategies for managing safety and identity online. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 8(2). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue2/bowker.html

4. Lampe, C., & Resnick, P. (2004). Slash(dot) and burn: Distributed moderation in a large online conversation space. Proceedings of CHI 2004. http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/papers/chi04/LampeResnick.pdf

5. Jøsang, A., Ismail, R., & Boyd, C. (2007). A survey of trust and reputation systems for online service provision. Decision Support Systems, 43 (2), 618-644. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/28303/JIB2007-DSS-Survey.pdf


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Week 8 (3/8):

Illegal, inethical, and antisocial uses.


Read:

(Choose 3)

1. Herring, S. C. et al. (2002). Searching for safety online: Managing 'trolling' in a feminist forum. The Information Society, 18(5), 371-383. [Oncourse]

2. Harvey, D. (2003). Cyberstalking and Internet harassment: What the law can do. [Oncourse]

3. Zickmund, S. (1997). Approaching the radical other: The discursive culture of cyberhate. In S. Jones (Ed.), Virtual culture: Identity and communication in cybersociety (pp. 185-205). Sage. [Oncourse]

4. Kaigo, M., & Watanabe, I. (2007). Ethos in chaos? Reaction to video files depicting socially harmful images in the Channel 2 Japanese Internet forum.  Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 6. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/kaigo.html

5. O'Sullivan, P., & Flanagin, A. (2003). Reconceptualizing 'flaming' and other problematic messages. New Media & Society. [Oncourse]

ALL READ: Hamilton, C. (2010). No LOLing matter: Facebook hoax -- and resulting threats -- expose seamy side of Internet. Planet S Magazine, Jan. 14. http://www.pl anetsmag.com/content.php?vn=8&is=11&an=1432&sc=1


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SPRING BREAK

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Week 9 (3/22):

CMC as mass media. Online newssites and blogs.


Read:

(choose 3)

1. Morris, M., & Ogan, C. (1996). The Internet as mass medium. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 1(4). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/ vol1/issue4/morris.html

2. Schultz, T. (2000). Mass media and the concept of interactivity: An exploratory study of online forums and reader e-mail. Media, Culture & Society, 22(2), 205-221. [Oncourse]

 
3. Lasica, J. D. (2002, April 18). Blogging as a form of journalism. USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review.
http://www.ojr.org/ ojr/lasica/1019166956.php

4.
Herring, S. C., Scheidt, L. A., Bonus, S., & Wright, E. (2004). Bridging the gap: A genre analysis of weblogs. Proceedings of the 37th Hawai'I International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society Press. [Oncourse]

5. Nardi, B., Schiano, D., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). I'm blogging this: A closer look at why people blog. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/classes/ics234cw04/nardi.pdf [Oncourse]
 
6. Du, H. S., & Wagner, C. (2005). Learning with weblogs: An empirical investigation. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2005.387


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Week 10 (3/29):

Collaborative CMC. Wikis.


If you plan to write a paper instead of taking the final exam, submit in a one-page proposal describing your topic, research question, data, methods, preliminary observations, and including a few possible references to your Oncourse Drop Box.


Read:

(For any 3, participate in a collaboratively-authored summary and critique in the wiki pages on Oncourse)

1. Wagner, C. (2004). Wiki: A technology for conversational knowledge management and group collaboration. Communications of the AIS, vol. 13, article 19.

 http://wikitrust.peacocktech.com/images/9/96/Wiki-_A_Technology_for_Conversational_Knowledge_Management_and_Group_Collaboration.pdf
 
2. Hoffmann, R. (2008). A wiki for the life sciences where authorship matters. Nature Genetics, 40(9), 1047-1051. [Oncourse]
 
3. Viégas, F. B., Wattenberg, M., & Dave, K. (2004). Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations. CHI 2004, 575-582. [Oncourse]
 
4. Kittur, A., Suh, B., Pendleton, B, & Chi, E. H. (2007). He says, she says: Conflict and coordination in Wikipedia. Proceedings of CHI 2007. ACM. [Oncourse]
 
5. Pfeil, U., Zaphiris, P., & Ang, C. S. (2006). Cultural differences in collaborative authoring of Wikipedia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(1), article 5. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue1/pfeil.html
 
6. Raitman, R., Augar, N., & Zhou, W. (2005). Employing wikis for online collaboration in the e-learning environment: Case study. Third International Conference on Information Technology and Applications, vol. 2 (pp. 142-148). [Oncourse]

 

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Week 11 (4/5):

Online social networks and social network sites.


Read:

(Choose 3)

1. Adamic, L.A., Adar, E. (2003). Friends and neighbors on the web. http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~rizos/web10.pdf

2. Adamic, L. A., Buyukkokten, O., & Adar, E. (2003). A social network caught in the web. First Monday, 8(6). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1057/977

3. boyd, d., & Ellison, N. (2007). Introduction, special issue on social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html


4. Ybarra, M. L., & Mitchell, K. J. (2008). How risky are social networking sites? A comparison of places online where youth sexual solicitation and harassment occurs. Pediatrics, 121, e350-e357. [Oncourse]

5. Haythornthwaite, C. (2001). Exploring multiplexity: Social network structures in a computer-supported distance learning class. The Information Society, 17, 211-216. [Oncourse]


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Week 12 (4/12):

Graphical worlds and avatars.


Read:

(Choose 3)

1. Cassell, J. (2000). More than just anot her pretty face: Embodied conversational interface agents. Communications of the ACM, 43(4), 70-78. [Oncourse]

2. Smith, M., Farnham, S., & Drucker, S. (2000). The social life of small graphical chat spaces. Proceedings of CHI 2000.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=332477

3. Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., & Merget, D. (2007). The unbearable likeness of being digital: The persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. The Journal of CyberPsychology and Behavior, 10, 115-121. [Oncourse]

4. Nowak, K. L., & Rauh, C. (2005). The influence of the avatar on online perceptions of anthropomorphism, androgyny, credibility, homophily, and attraction. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 8. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/nowak.html

5. Holzwarth, M, Janiszewski, C., & Neumann, M. M. (2006). The influence of avatars on online consumer shopping behavior. Journal of Marketing, 70, 19-36. [Oncourse]

6. Nesson, R., & Nesson, C. (2008). The case for education in virtual worlds. Space and Culture, 11(3), 273-284. [Oncourse]

Guest Lecture:

Sharon Stoerger


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Week 13 (4/19):

Convergent media CMC. MMOGs, YouTube, microblogging, interactive television.


Read:

1. Jenkins, H. (2004). The cultural logic of media convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7, 33-43. [Oncourse]

2. Lange, P. G. (2007). Publicly private and privately public: Social networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 18. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/lange.html

3. Honeycutt, C. L., & Herring, S. C. (2009). Beyond micro-blogging: Conversation and collaboration via Twitter. Proceedings of the Forty-Second Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press. http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/honeycutt.herring.2009.pdf

4. Williams, D., Caplan, S., & Xiong, L. (2007). Can you hear me now? The impact of voice in an online gaming community. Human Communication Research, 33, 427-449. [Oncourse]

5. Lytras, M., Lougos C., Chozos, P., & Pouloudi, A. (2002). Interactive television and e-learning convergence: Examining the potential of t-learning. Proceedings of the European Conference on E-Learning. Academic Conferences International: Reading. [Oncourse]


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Week 14 (4/26):

CMC in a multilingual world. Machine translation of CMC. Review for final exam.


Read:


1. Danet, B., & Herring, S. C. (2007). Multilingualism on the Internet. In M. Hellister & A. Pauwels (Eds.), Language and Communication: Diversity and Change, Handbook of Applied Linguistics, vol. 9. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [Oncourse]

2. Dor, D. (2004). From Englishization to imposed multilingualism. Public Culture, 16(1), 97-118. [Oncourse]

3. Climent, S., More, J., Oliver, A., Salvatierra, M., Sanchez, I., Taule, M., & Vallmanya, L. (2003). Bilingual newsgroups in Catalonia: A challenge for machine translation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 9(1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/climent.html

 


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Week 15 (5/3):

Take-home final exam OR term paper due by 5 p.m.


Last updated: 3/20/10