Syllabus: Social Media Platforms and Policy

Social Media Platforms and Policy

COMS 427 / COMS 598-03, Winter 2020
Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University

Instructor: Luciano Frizzera, Ph.D. Student in Communication Studies
Email: lucaju@gmail.com
Website: coms427.fluxo.art.br
Time: Thursdays from 1:15 pm - 4:00 pm [Jan 06-April 09, 2020]
Location: CJ 4.246
Office hours: Thursdays 11:45 am - 12:45 pm (Office ***) or by appointment

Orginal site: coms427.fluxo.art.br

Course Description

This course critically examines the cultures, economics and affordances of social media platforms. The development of social media platforms is also discussed in order to understand how global flows of technology and culture converge. This course also examines platform policy and governance.

Extended Description

Social media platforms represent a new mode of communication that has become quickly interwoven into the everyday lives of billions of people around the world. As being the “new normal,” these platforms are often taken for granted but regarded with fear or awe when putting in relation to social, cultural, political, and economic issues. The purpose of this class is to break down the mythologies of social media and develop methods of analysis and critical understanding.

This course takes a critical approach to analyze the role and scope of social media by examining socio-historical perspectives regarding technology and society, current trends concerning social media’s impact on contemporary issues, and social scientific theories relevant to communicating via social media. We will draw from a broad range of social theories and methods including Science and Technology Studies (STS), Communication Theory, Software Studies, Human-Computer Interaction, Digital Methods, Cultural Studies, Political Economy, and Science Fiction to critically evaluate the impact of social media on relationships, activism, politics, news media, policymaking, sovereignty, aesthetics, and identity. We will focus on the “socio-technical,” or the relationship between the technical affordances of a platform or technology and the social norms of a user community, and how to use this to understand emerging technologies (and social media that does not exist yet!).

Our emphasis is on the social relations of power and connectivity that are shaped by social media as practices of communication and formations of capital. Specific topics that will be explored include: virtual communities; surveillance and privacy; bots and AI; issues of race and gender; self-representation and aesthetics; social media practices as digital labour and the valorization of capital; the politics of social media platforms as code and interface; the algorithmic culture of big data; production of alternative realities (disinformation and fake news); communities of user-generated content in social media; social media and affective publics; and (always-already) memes and Internet Cats!

Course Objectives

By taking this course, students will gain an understanding of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Multiplayer Online Games. Specifically, students will understand the strategic use, information policy and governance of digital and social media platforms and tools. Students will also acquire the ability to critically assess social media platforms through an understanding of key concepts such as sociability, identity, self-representation, surveillance and privacy, engagement and activism, democracy, fake news, inequality, and ethics.

Specific Goals

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Identify, understand and distinguish different platforms and strategies of social media.
• Explore a wide spectrum of topics within the digital social media space in order to be able to understand this transformative ecosystem.
• Know, understand and analyze the multiple social issues of communication in the digital age.
• Analyze, critically examine and be able to distinguish the discourses accompanying the rise of social media in the digital age from their uses and real impacts, and to put them into perspective.
• Develop tactics and strategies (and even short pieces of code) to research and study and digital ecosystems.
• Apply the knowledge and skills acquired during the course by producing a piece of critical writing.

Pedagogical Approach

The course will take the form of a collaborative space between the professor and students. They will be actively participating in the course, whether through discussions, team presentations, or engagement with social media platforms. The class will be arranged in a seminar-style, where students will be encouraged to expose their ideas, thoughts and critiques about the various subjects. The classroom is considered a safe space: the participants must be supportive of each other, respecting any divergence whenever it arrives: collegiality is very important inside and outside the classroom.

Exercises, practical workshops, readings and guest speakers can also be included in the course. All this material will help students to write an original paper/project as their final assignment. Texts, slides and additional tools, documents or sources will be available on the course’s website. Students are expected to review course information and, if applicable, tools or other additional sources from the course website site.

Course Readings

There is no course pack. All course readings will be available on the course website and at the Concordia Library’s ejournal database. You do not have to complete the suggested readings. They are included to be a resourceful repository for further insights into the topic discussed each week and to help your research.

Required

• Dijck, J. van. (2013). The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Suggested

• Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations (P. Beitchman, P. Foss, & P. Patton, Trans.). Semiotex(e).
• Crary, J. (2014). 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso.
• Dijck, J. van, Poell, T., & Waal, M. de. (2018). The Platform Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (REP edition). New York: Vintage.
• Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity.
• Mosco, V. (2004). The digital sublime: Myth, power, and cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
• Pariser, E. (2012). The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think (Reprint edition). New York, NY: Penguin Books.
• Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (revised edition). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.
• Standage, T. (2013). Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years (1 edition). New York: Bloomsbury USA.

Assignments

Participation

Your full participation is essential. It includes the completion of assigned readings, attendance, and contribution to class discussions and activities. You should arrive having read and thought about the assigned readings, bringing at least two questions, examples, or comments to share with the class. We will begin each class with close readings of different passages, both suggested by you and picked by me, and discuss what we find compelling and problematic about these passages. Please note, if you are uncomfortable speaking in front of your peers due to your own personal reasons, please talk with me at the beginning of the term, and we will make alternative arrangements. Your participation marks will also be affected by how supportive you are to fellow classmates: collegiality is very important inside and outside the classroom.

Group-led Discussion

You will be asked to form pairs or groups of three. The groups will sign up for one week to organize a discussion motivated by the course readings of that week in a seminar-style. The intention behind this process is to energize critical thought on the course reading and offer a meaningful approach to a specific social media issue. This activity should be between 30-40 minutes, and the group will present the main topics and concepts discussed in the readings. After that, we will have a tour de table about the outcomes from the activities and a more in-depth dialogue about the issues being discussed. It is suggested that one week prior to the presentation, the group members stay 15 minutes after class to speak to me about what they are planning and to receive preliminary feedback.

Reading Reports

2 Reports (500-700 words each)

This assignment is designed to be low-stakes (not worth very much individually), but aim to help you gain a deeper understanding of the readings. You are responsible for submitting two reports, each worth 5%. This assignment is very straightforward: your job, in two pages, is to write a short summary of the readings of the week of your choice, including questions the text raises, connections it has to prior readings, class discussions, or contemporary media, or critiques of the readings. You should explain the concepts to the best of your ability, making links where you can to other ideas and theories covered in the course. The goal of this assignment is to help you to develop close reading skills that are essential to both critical reading and thinking skills. Thus, it might be useful to focus on one or two passages, concepts or ideas discussed in the readings.

Reading reports start in the third week, and you should pick at least one week before the reading week.

Social Media Platform Critical Profile

4-5 pages
Due: week 7

Choose a social media platform to explore, write a profile and reflect using two course readings. You should produce a short summary of a social media platform, which can include some of its history, key people, main goals and objectives, interface affordances, and types of media and interactions it allows and promotes. You should reflect on the presuppositions these platforms built upon, the modes of communication they push forward, the technology involved, and the social, political, and economic implications they have in our society. Some of the questions to consider: What are the ethical complexities of this platform? What kind of interactions and socialization does it encourage? How is it being framed in the digital ecosystem? What is the underlying economic model? How is data managed? What visions of society it put forward?

I will provide a list of options, which excludes the platforms we will directly examine during the course (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.). Students can also suggest other options. Though it is not a requirement, I encourage you to register yourself in the platform to have a more accurate experience of the social media environment.

The reflection must be approximately 4-5 pages long, in addition to any image you want to add and a bibliography section.

Final Original Paper

10 pages
Due: week 14

The final assignment essay is an original paper on the topic of your choice. Consider writing on issues we have covered throughout this curse: virtual communities; gender and racial representation; privacy surveillance; bots and AI; ethics; ideology; political economy; video-games, algorithmic media, fake news, digital methods, etc. In a 10-page paper, you should respond to your selected issues, and use a minimum of 4 course readings to articulate what is at stake. While I encourage the use of non-academic articles to contextualize the topic, please remember the emphasis needs to be on the course reading and in their application on the selected topic.

Specifications

All written submission should include the following: the title of your text (give your work a meaningful title), the name of the assignment (e.g., Social Media Platform Critical Profile), your name, the course title and number, and the submission date.

Your work should be double-spaced, in 12-point Times font; 1.5-inch margins all around; page numbers on the lower right; and include a separate reference page with full source citations. You can choose the citation style of your preference, but please use it consistently throughout your text.

Send your work by email: lucaju@gmail.com

PDF or Word file is preferable.

Late Assignments

All assignments are due on the date specified and must be submitted by the deadline. There will be no make-up date for Group-led Discussions. Assignment extensions may be granted only in rare and unavoidable circumstances. If you will require an extension, you must bring this to my attention (preferably by email) in advance of the deadline and generally one week or more in advance. If I have not granted an extension, the following late policy will apply: 1 grade increment (+/-) will be deducted from the total assignment grade for every 24 hours that an assignment is late for up to six days (accumulating a maximum 2-point deduction). Assignments more than six days late will receive a zero grade. Late assignments may not receive written comments or feedback.

Questions?

If you have a question about any aspect of the course, assignments, readings, or concepts, please ask it in class so that others can also benefit from hearing the response. If you do not wish to ask your question during the class, please discuss it with me immediately following the class or during my office hours. I will stay for 5-10 minutes after class or until I have addressed all questions. Discussing questions in person is the easiest and quickest way to ensure that we are on the same page. If you must send a question by email, you may have to wait up to 24 business hours for a response and you may not receive a response from me outside of business hours. I will not discuss grades over email. If you wish for an assignment to be reassessed, you will need to send me a written explanation for why the piece should be reassessed and then arrange an appointment to discuss the assignment face-to-face during office hours or after class.

Schedule

1 - Social Media Historical Perspective

January 09

Class Introductions. Syllabus and course review. Summarize the historical context of social media as a mode of communication.

Readings

• Standage, T. (2013). The Rebirth of Social Media: From ARPANET to Facebook. In Writing on the Wall: Social Media-The First 2,000 Years (1 edition, pp. 214-239). New York: Bloomsbury USA.

Suggested reading:

• Carr, C. T., & Hayes, R. A. (2015). Social Media: Defining, Developing, and Divining. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23(1), 46-65.

2 - Engineering Sociality and the Networked Society

January 16

Define the preconditions for the existence of social media platforms. Introduce to concepts of cybernetics and society of control. Discuss the relationship between the technophilic ideology and networked society. Explore the ecosystem of social networks in the culture of connectivity.

Readings

• Dijck, J. van. (2013). Engineering Sociality in a Culture of Connectivity. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 3-23). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Barbrook, R., & Cameron, A. (1996). The Californian ideology. Science as Culture, 6(1), 44-72.

Suggested reading:

• Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October, 59, 3-7.
• Bush, V. (1945, July 1). As We May Think. The Atlantic.
• Tufekci, Z. (2014). Engineering the public: Big data, surveillance and computational politics. First Monday, 19(7).
• Mosco, V. (2004). The digital sublime: Myth, power, and cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

3 - Disassembling Platforms*

January 23

Define the concept of platform. Discuss platforms as techno-cultural construct as well as socio-economic (infra)structures. Explore the relationships of the vast network of materials, institutions, companies, technologies, algorithms, governance, sovereignty, users, and media that comprise the social media ecosystem. Introduce to methods of study and examine digital platforms.

Readings

• Dijck, J. van. (2013). Disassembling Platforms, Reassembling Society. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 24-44). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Crawford, K., & Joler, V. (2018). Anatomy of an AI System. Retrieved November 16, 2019, from Anatomy of an AI System website: http://www.anatomyof.ai

Suggested reading:

• Light, B., Burgess, J., & Duguay, S. (2018). The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps. New Media & Society, 20(3), 881-900.
• DeNardis, Laura. 2012. “Hidden Levers of Internet Control.” Information, Communication & Society 15 (5) (June):720-738.

4 - Platform Society*

January 30

Introduce the concept of datafication and commodification. Discuss the political economy of social media platforms, as well as their geopolitical implications. Introduce the different ways to produce data, both through intentional data sharing and automatic sensors and trackers. Relate to ideas of data tracking, labour exploitation, total surveillance and the goals of late capitalism.

Readings

• Dijczk, J. van, Poell, T., & Waal, M. de. (2018). Platform Society as a Contested Concept. In The Platform Society (pp.7-30). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Crary, J. (2014). 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso. [Excerpt: Chapter 1:1-28]

Suggested reading:

• Dijck, J. van, Poell, T., & Waal, M. de. (2018). Platform Mechanisms. In The Platform Society (pp. 31-48). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity. [Excerpt: Chapter 2: Platform Capitalism:36-92]

5 - Virtual Communities and Self-Representation *

February 6

Introduce the concepts of virtual communities, avatar, and Massive Multiuser Online platforms (MMO). Explore earlier forms of social media networks (BBS, IRC) and virtual world (Second Life, Word of Warcraft). Discuss the construction and representation of the self in relation to issues of gender, race, group formation, and disembodied experiences.

Readings

• Rheingold, H. (2000). Multi-user Dungeons and Alternate Identities. In The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (revised edition, pp. 149-180).
• Turkle, S. (1994). Constructions and reconstructions of self in virtual reality: Playing in the MUDs. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1(3), 158-167.

Suggested reading:

• Parks, M. (2011). Social network sites as virtual communities. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 39-58). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Dibbell, J. (1993, December). A Rape in Cyberspace. The Village Voice.16p.
• Rheingold, H. (2000). Real-time Tribes. In The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (revised edition, pp. 181-204).
• Neustaedter, C., & Fedorovskaya, E. (2009). Presenting Identity in a Virtual World Through Avatar Appearances. In Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2009 (pp. 183-190). Toronto, Ont., Canada, Canada: Canadian Information Processing Society.
• Leggatt, J. (Ed.). (2016). Material Connections in Skawennati’s Digital Worlds. (230/231), 216-232.
• Visit: http://indigenousfutures.net/activating-abtec-island/

6 - Privacy & Surveillance: Facebook*

February 13

Introduce concepts of privacy and surveillance. Discuss the power dynamics involved in data production and sharing on social media platforms. Describes the emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, surveillance capitalism, and considers its implications for information civilization. Identify surveillance technologies, including sensors and trackers. Platform to explore: Facebook.

Readings

• Dijck, J. van. (2013). Facebook and the Imperative of Sharing. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 45-67). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology; London, 30(1), 75-89.
• Paglen, T. (2016). Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You). Retrieved October 11,2019.

Suggested reading:

• Penney, J. (2017). Internet Surveillance, Regulation, and Chilling Effects Online: A Comparative Case Study. Internet Policy Review, 6(2), 24.
• Chinoy, S. (2019). We Built an ‘Unbelievable’ (but Legal) Facial Recognition Machine. The New York Times - Opinion.
• Intercept, T. (2018). Google and Facebook Are Quietly Fighting California’s Privacy Rights Initiative, Emails Reveal. Medium. Retrieved on December 3, 2019.
• Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (REP edition). New York: Vintage.

7 - Social Influence, Bots & AI: Twitter *

February 20

Examine the phenomena of social influencers and the snowball effect. Discuss the implications of automation, the use of bots and trends to drive public opinion. Identifies what constitutes as legitimate participation in an environment where bots and humans coexist. Platform to explore: Twitter.

Readings

• Dijck, J. van. (2013). Twitter and the Paradox of Following and Trending. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 68-88). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Duguay, S. (2018). Social media’s breaking news: The logic of automation in Facebook Trending Topics and Twitter Moments. Media International Australia, 166(1), 20-33.
• Confessore, N., Dance, G. J. X., Harris, R., & Hansen, M. (2018). The Follower Factory. The New York Times.

Suggested reading:

• Chu, Z., Gianvecchio, S., Wang, H., & Jajodia, S. (2012). Detecting Automation of Twitter Accounts: Are You a Human, Bot, or Cyborg? IEEE Transactions on Dependable & Secure Computing, 9(6), 811-824.
• Harari, Y. N. (2018). Why Technology Favors Tyranny. The Atlantic.

8 - Reading Week

February 27

9 - Race, Representation and Aesthetics: Instagram*

March 5

Discuss the role of social media platforms in the formation of social and cultural normative, including questions of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Identify trends on the aesthetics of sharing, and the constitution of new symbolical capital. Relate to the previous discussions on datafication, surveillance, and self-representation, including selfies. Platform to explore: Instagram.

Readings

• Roth, L. (2009). Looking at Shirley, the ultimate norm: Colour balance, image technologies, and cognitive equity. Canadian Journal of Communication, 34(1), 111-136.
• Manovich, L. (2016). Instagrammism and contemporary cultural identity. In Instagram and Contemporary Image (pp. 1-25).

Suggested reading:

• Laestadius, L. (2017). Instagram. In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 573-592). Sage.
• Palmer, E. (2015). Instagram, Big Data & the New Symbolic Capital of 21st-Century Media Photography. Big Data, 21.
• Tifentale, A. (2016). The Networked Camera at Work: Why Every Self-portrait Is Not a Selfie, but Every Selfie is a Photograph. Riga Photography Biennial 2016, 74-83.
• Nakamura, L. N. (1995). Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet.
• NEW: Leaver, T., Highfield, T., & Abidin, C. (2020). Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Polity.

10 - Algorithmic Media & Recommendation Systems: YouTube*

March 12

Introduce to the concept of Algorithmic Media and Recommendation Systems. Understand how social media platforms select, filter, and personalize users’ feeds. Discuss the ethics of information manipulations, and the social impact of the so-called “echo chamber” phenomenon. Platform to explore: YouTube.

Readings

• Bozdag, E. (2013). Bias in algorithmic filtering and personalization. Ethics and Information Technology, 15(3), 209-227.
• Bucher, T. (2012). Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook. New Media & Society, 14(7), 1164-1180.
• Arthurs, J., Drakopoulou, S., & Gandini, A. (2018). Researching YouTube. Convergence, 24(1), 3-15.

Suggested reading:

• Dijck, J. van. (2013). Youtube: The intimate Connection between Television and Video Sharing. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 110-131). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Epstein, R., & Robertson, R. E. (2015). The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(33), E4512-E4521.
• Covington, P., Adams, J., & Sargin, E. (2016). Deep Neural Networks for YouTube Recommendations. Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems - RecSys ’16, 191-198.
• Pariser, E. (2012). The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think (Reprint edition). New York, NY: Penguin Books

11 - Disinformation & Simulations*

March 19

Introduce to concepts of Simulation and Simulacra, fake news, and disinformation. Discuss the role of social media in the production of narratives and alternative realities. Explore the influence of “echo chambers” and the formation of closed communities, and the implication of disinformation and fake news on politics and democratic elections. Platform to explore: WhatsApp.

Readings

• Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations [Excerpt]. (pp. 1-30). Semiotex(e).
• Evangelista, R., & Bruno, F. (2019). WhatsApp and political instability in Brazil: Targeted messages and political radicalisation. Internet Policy Review.

Suggested reading:

• Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election. Journal of Economic Perspectives,31(2), 211-236.
• Tufekci, Z. (2018). YouTube, the Great Radicalizer. The New York Times.
• Avelar, D. (2019). WhatsApp fake news during Brazil election ‘favoured Bolsonaro’. The Guardian.
• Bogost, I. (2015). The Cathedral of Computation. The Atlantic.
• Arikan, B. (2017). The year 2016 marked the post-truth era, what now? Retrieved on December 4, 2019.
• Keller, M. H. (2018). [The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/11/technology/youtube-fake-view-sellers.html. The New York Times.

12 - Social Media Governance & Policy: Wikipedia*

March 26

Introduce concepts of governance and policy in relation to socio-technical platforms. Discuss the mechanisms, motivations, and sources of power of social media platforms. Examine the different ways control and governance are enacted and even automatize by digital infrastructures. Identify the main actors involved in producing public or Ad hoc policies for social media platforms. Platform to explore: Wikipedia.

Readings

• Gillespie, T. (2017). Governance of and by platforms. In J. Burgess, T. Poell, & A. Marwick (Eds.), SAGE Handbook of Social Media (p. 30).
• Schwarz, O. (2019). Facebook Rules: Structures of Governance in Digital Capitalism and the Control of Generalized Social Capital. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(4), 117-141.

Suggested reading:

• Dijck, J. van. (2013). Wikipedia and the Neutrality Principle. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 132-153). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Buni, C. (2016). The secret rules of the internet. Retrieved on December 4, 2019.
• Massanari, A. (2017). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329-346.

13 - Ranking Cultures & Impersonal Subjectivation

April 2

Introduce to concepts of hyper nudge and subjectivation. Identify potential strategies social media platforms use to modulate social habits and produce subjects. Discuss how these subjects operate in our current society, and the what are the implications of rankings and ratings promoted by social media platforms have on social, cultural and political relations.

Readings

• Yeung, K. (2016). ‘Hypernudge’: Big Data as a Mode of Regulation by Design. Information, Communication & Society, 32(1), 32.
• Langlois, G., & Elmer, G. (2019). Impersonal subjectivation from platforms to infrastructures. Media, Culture & Society, 41(2), 236-251.

Suggested reading:

• Wright, J. (2016). Nosedive. In Black Mirror.
• Hull, G. (2018). Hypernudges as Subjectification. Retrieved August 26, 2019, from New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science.
• Hvistendahl, M. (2017). In China, a Three-Digit Score Could Dictate Your Place in Society. Wired Magazine.

14 - Data Analytics & Digital Methods

April 9

Introduce digital methods and data analysis. Identify strategies to study and research social media platforms and digital media in general. Familiarize with a selection of systems, tools, and codes for digital research. Learn how to collect data from social media (Twitter). Discuss the assumptions embedded in such tools.

Readings

• Kitchin, R. (2017). Thinking critically about and researching algorithms. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 14-29.

Suggested reading:

• Thelwall, M. (2017). Sentiment Analysis. In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 545556). Sage.

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Plagiarism: The most common offense under the Academic Code of Conduct is plagiarism, which the Code defines as “the presentation of the work of another person as one’s own or without proper acknowledgement.” This includes material copied word for word from books, journals, Internet sites, professor’s course notes, etc. It refers to material that is paraphrased but closely resembles the original source. It also includes for example the work of a fellow student, an answer on a quiz, data for a lab report, a paper or assignment completed by another student. It might be a paper purchased from any source. Plagiarism does not refer to words alone -it can refer to copying images, graphs, tables and ideas. “Presentation” is not limited to written work. It includes oral presentations, computer assignment and artistic works. Finally, if you translate the work of another person into any other language and do not cite the source, this is also plagiarism. In Simple Words: Do not copy, paraphrase or translate anything from anywhere without saying where you obtained it! Source: Academic Integrity Website: http://concordia.ca/students/academicintegrity

Disabilities: The University’s commitment to providing equal educational opportunities to all students includes students with disabilities. To demonstrate full respect for the academic capacities and potential of students with disabilities, the University seeks to remove attitudinal and physical barriers that may hinder or prevent qualified students with disabilities from participating fully in University life. Please see the instructor during the first class if you feel you require assistance. For more information please visit http://concordia.ca/offices/acsd

Safe Space Classroom: Concordia classrooms are considered ‘safe space classrooms’. In order to create a climate for open and honest dialogue and to encourage the broadest range of viewpoints, it is important for class participants to treat each other with respect. Name-calling, accusations, verbal attacks, sarcasm, and other negative exchanges are counter-productive to successful teaching and learning. The purpose of class discussions is to generate greater understanding about different topics. The expression of the broadest range of ideas, including dissenting views, helps to accomplish this goal. However, in expressing viewpoints, students should try to raise questions and comments in ways that will promote learning, rather than defensiveness and feelings of conflict in other students. Thus, questions and comments should be asked or stated in such a way that will promote greater insight into the awareness of topics as opposed to anger and conflict. The purpose of dialogue and discussion is not to reach a consensus, nor to convince each other of different viewpoints. Rather, the purpose of dialogue in the classroom is to reach higher levels of learning by examining different viewpoints and opinions with respect and civility.

Department Policies

Participation: This grade is based on overall punctuality and attendance in the classes, labs and workshops. Student preparedness, initiative and level of class engagement is evaluated (this means participating in discussions and demonstration of familiarity with required readings). Participation also includes completing all required readings and all assignments on time. Students are expected to be collegial, respectful and tolerant of peers, teaching assistants, technical instructors and professors. The best classroom experience will occur with courteous and engaged participation and interaction with each other, the work, the discussions and debates.

Attendance: Regular attendance is a requirement. Students are expected to actively participate in all classes, workshops, critiques, discussions and labs associated with courses, and to complete all required course work according to deadlines and guidelines as assigned. Failure to comply can result in loss of marks.

Electronic Devices: No electronic devices may be used once the class starts. All mobile phones, iPods, PDAs, cell phones, laptops etc. must be turned off and put away. The only exceptions are if the Access Centre for Students with Disabilities has authorized such use or the instructor specifically grants permission for use.

Communication Studies Numerical Grade, Letter Grade and Official Grade Point Equivalence

Please note the individual instructors may elect to use numerical grades, letter grades or both for individual assignments, while all final marks for the course are given as letter grades at the university level.

A = Superior work in both content and presentation. This is a student who appears, even at an early stage, to be a potential honours student. The work answers all components of a question. It demonstrates clear and persuasive argument, a wellstructured text that features solid introductory and concluding arguments, and examples to illustrate the argument. Few, if any presentation errors appear.

B = Better than average in both content and presentation. This student has the potential for honours, though it is less evident than for the A student. Student’s work is clear and well structured. Minor components of an answer might be missing, and there may be fewer illustrations for the argument. Some minor but noticeable errors in presentation may have interfered with the general quality of the work.

C = Student demonstrates a satisfactory understanding of the material. Ideas are presented in a style that is at least somewhat coherent and orderly. Occasional examples are provided to support arguments. Presentation errors that affect the quality of the work are more apparent than in B work. Some components of a question may have been omitted in the response.

D = Student has only a basic grasp of the material. Sense of organization and development is often not demonstrated in the response. Few, if any, examples are provided to illustrate argument. Major components of a question might have been neglected; and major presentation errors hamper the work.

F = Shows an inadequate grasp of the material. Work has major errors of style; and provides no supporting illustration for argument. Ideas are not clear to the reader. Work lacks a sense of structure.

Additional criteria, parameters and guidelines will be handed out in class when each assignment is introduced and discussed.