Homework: November 30, 2007

Here are the three things I'd like you to look at for Friday's class:

1) Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, pages 5-18.

2) Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain's "Tales From the Public Domain" (the link takes you to their download page where you can get it in a variety of file formats). Read as much of it as you can, but at least the first 20 pages or so).

3) The Center for Social Media's "Remix Culture"




For each piece, ask yourself the following questions:

• How important is it for a society to allow free circulation of ideas?
• Is a "meaning" the same thing as an "idea"? If media are the technologies and practices used to circulate meanings, how central is the concept of intellectual property to it?
• How much should the government be involved in the process? Would Verhulst's argument about self-regulation be a reasonable remedy for figuring out how to assess propriety in the cases raised in each piece? Why or why not?

For Class: The Daedelus Project

For class tomorrow (Friday, November 9), I would like you to look at the following website:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_intro.html

Look through at least the first several pages (intro, demographics, etc.) and ask yourself the following questions:

• What are the benefits of gathering media consumer direct responses to specific questions as compared to observation in a laboratory setting?

• Can you see any detriments to this approach to media research?

• Are there any moral or ethical challenges you would face in either kind of research? What are they? How could you overcome them?

Reading Questions: Baym's "Interpersonal Life Online"

• What are Baym's communication-related characteristics of online media? Do you find any of them relevant to your own interactions with family and friends online? If you have started your Consumption Analysis already, how well do these characteristics apply to the people you have met in the forums?

• According to Baym, how do online relationships compare to real-life ones? Do you find this to be accurate in your own experience? Do you regularly keep in touch with someone online whom you do not know in real life? How would you describe your relationship with that person or people compared to your face-to-face friends?

• What is the controversy over the use of the term "community" when discussing computer-mediated communication (CMC)? What do you think about this debate?