Online Communities and Crowds (Winter 2022)

Online Communities & Crowds

Communication Studies 378 (undergraduate)

Media, Technology & Society (MTS) 525 (graduate)

Wednesdays 10am-11:30am CT

Winter, 2022

Northwestern University

Course websites

Canvas for announcements, submitting assignments, and file sharing.

Zoom for remote, synchronous course meetings and guest speaker visits.

Class discord server for chat and probably some other stuff.

Course Wikiedu page for everything related to the Wikipedia Assignment.

This wiki page for nearly everything else.

Instructor: Aaron Shaw (aaronshaw@northwestern.edu)

Office Hours: TBA

Please signup for office hours appointments (and check that page for details).

Detail of an ukiyo-e styled image generated by Wombo.ai from the prompt "online communities and crowds" on December 27, 2021

Course information

Overview and learning objectives

Online communities and crowds are fundamental to how people communicate, work, play, learn, socialize, and more. However, they also threaten our well-being and seem to undermine critical social institutions as well as the integrity of public discourse.

This course seeks to understand online communities and crowds. It does so through an interdisciplinary inquiry into a set of practical challenges that confront online communities and crowds today. When and why do some efforts to overcome these challenges succeed? What can we learn from these experiences?

Assignments

In general, I will ask you to submit any written assignments as a PDF via Canvas. I recommend a clear, professional, and conversational tone in your writing. I also recommend you familiarize yourself with salient principles on academic integrity, including the appropriate attribution of sources. Please submit written work in a readable (size 11 or greater) font. Please include your name somewhere (prominent) in the document that you submit as well as your last name at the beginning of the filename (e.g., "Shaw-occ-week1-assignment.pdf").

Weekly assignments

The course schedule (below) provides details of all weekly assignments as well as links to materials and Canvas pages required to complete them. In general, weekly assignments are due Tuesdays at 6pm U.S. central time in order to allow time for review of (and sometimes feedback on) your submitted materials ahead of our class session. Weekly assignments will consist of readings, written materials, and occasional activities related to the class topic that week. For activities that involve collaboration or conversation with colleagues, it is up to you to coordinate any meeting times, places, or communication channels as needed.

Grading and assessment

The teaching team will assign grades (usually a number between 0-10) for each of the following aspects of your performance in the course. For each aspect, grades start with the maximum possible value (10) and only decrease in the event of a specific failure to meet some aspect of the relevant assessment rubric (more on those below). The percentage values are weights that will be applied to calculate your overall grade for the course.

• Weekly participation: 40%
• Weekly assignments: 40%
• Final assignment (including all intermediate assignments): 20%

For detailed assessment rubrics that the teaching team will use to derive grades for all assignments, please see Aaron's page on assessment.

Policies

General course policies

General policies on a wide variety of topics including classroom equity, attendance, academic integrity, accommodations, late assignments, and more are provided on Aaron's class policies page. Below are some policy statements specific to this course and quarter.

COVID-19 Policies

My COVID-19 policies page provides specific COVID-19 policies mandated by Northwestern University. Several additional COVID-19-related policies follow below.

Teaching and learning in a pandemic

Even beyond my COVID-19 policies, the ongoing pandemic will impact this course in various ways, some of them obvious and tangible and others harder to pin down. On the obvious and tangible front, we have things like the fact that we will begin quarter remotely and, assuming we return to campus, will still be wearing masks when we do so. These will shape our collective experience in major ways.

On the "harder to pin down" side, even though (or maybe especially because) we've been doing this pandemic thing for a while now, many of us may experience elevated levels of exhaustion, stress, uncertainty and/or distraction. We may need to provide unexpected support to family, friends, or others in our communities. I have some personal experiences with this and I expect that many (all?) of you do too. It can be a difficult time.

It is important to acknowledge the realities of the situation and create the space to discuss and process them in the context of our class throughout the quarter. As your instructor and colleague, I commit to do my best to approach the course in an adaptive, generous, and empathetic way. I will try to be transparent and direct with you throughout—both with respect to the course material as well as the pandemic and the university's ongoing response to it. I ask that you try to extend a similar attitude towards everyone in the course. When you have questions, feedback, or concerns, please try to share them in an appropriate, empathetic way. If you require accommodations of any kind at any time (directly related to the pandemic or not), please contact me.

Expectations for class sessions

The following are some baseline expectations for our class sessions. Please feel free to ask questions, suggest changes, or raise concerns during the quarter. I welcome all input.

• All members of the class are expected to create a supportive and welcoming environment that is respectful of the conditions under which we are participating in this class.
• All members of the class are expected to take reasonable steps to create an effective teaching/learning environment for themselves and others.

Please note that these expectations apply independent of whatever modalities we use to hold the class!

Expectations for synchronous remote "lecture" sessions

And here are suggested protocols for any video/audio portions of the "lecture" portions of our class (i.e., the Wednesday meetings):

• Please mute your microphone whenever you're not speaking and learn to use "push-to-talk" if/when possible.
• Video is optional for students during lecture, although if you're willing/able to keep the instructors company in the video channel we always appreciate it.
• If possible, we ask you to enable video when you want to speak (ask a question, make a comment, etc.) or are in breakout rooms.
• If you need to excuse yourself at any time and for any reason you may do so.
• Children, family, pets, roommates, and others with whom you may share your workspace are welcome to join our class as needed. Please do your best to minimize distractions and disruptions to others in the course.

Expectations for in-person sessions

Please wear a suitable and well-fitting face covering over your nose and mouth for the duration of our time in class together.

I ask everyone to come to our in-person class sessions prepared to comply with all applicable university COVID-19 policies and guidelines. We will be following Northwestern's guidelines for instructional spaces, including the use of face coverings, consistent seating, and health monitoring using the Symptom Tracker app (either the mobile or web-based version is fine). We'll review this early in the quarter as Northwestern continues to update its policies and guidelines.

Syllabus revisions

This syllabus will be a dynamic document that will evolve throughout the quarter. Although the core expectations are fixed, the details will shift. As a result, please keep in mind the following:

1. Assignments and readings are frozen 1 week before they are due. I will not add readings or assignments less than one week before they are due. If I forget to add something or fill in a "To Be Determined" less than one week before it's due, it is dropped. If you plan to read or work more than one week ahead, contact me first.
2. Substantial changes to the syllabus or course materials will be announced. Please monitor your email for Canvas messages about changes. Also, whenever I make changes, these changes will be recorded in the edit history of this page so that you can track what has changed.
3. The course design may adapt throughout the quarter. As usual (for me at least), I may iterate and prototype course design elements rapidly along the way. To this end, I will ask you for voluntary feedback — especially toward the beginning of the quarter. Please let me know what is working and what can be improved. In the past, I have made many adjustments based on this feedback and I expect to do so again.

Additional resources/readings

Throughout the quarter, we will undoubtedly generate a long list of related topics, readings, videos, memes, etc.

Please add things to that list here

Schedule (with all the details)

Week 1: 9.22

TOPIC

Reading/Viewing

• Benzecry, Claudio. (Forthcoming). The Perfect Fit. University of Chicago Press. Preface and Chapter 1 (on Canvas).

Additional resources

• Stevens, Mitchell. 2021. Harvard-Riverside, Round Trip. Public Books, August 11.

Credit and notes

This course design and syllabus builds from prior iterations as well as similar/adjacent courses offered by Joseph Reagle (Northeastern University); Benjamin Mako Hill (University of Washington); Casey Fiesler (University of Colorado at Boulder); Amy Bruckman (Georgia Institute of Technology); Sarita Yardi Schoenbeck (University of Michigan); Nazanin Andalibi (University of Michigan); and Nicole Ellison (University of Michigan). It has also been shaped by input from past students in the course and past teaching assistants (Sneha Narayan and Jeremy Foote).