Online Communities and Crowds (Winter 2022)/Graduate section

Online Communities & Crowds

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

Section meetings: Thursday 10am-11:30am CT

Winter, 2022

Northwestern University

Instructor: Aaron Shaw (aaronshaw@northwestern.edu)

Office Hours: Wednesdays 12:30-2:30pm and by-appointment.

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

Also usually available via Discord for chat during "business hours."

Overview

Welcome to the graduate section page for the Winter 2022 MTS 525 course, Online communities & crowds! We'll use this page to coordinate section-specific resources and activities.

All course policies and expectations are detailed and/or linked on the main page for the course. Please see that material and get in touch with your questions or concerns.

Section-specific items

Section meetings

Synchronous section will take place Thursdays 10am-11:30am. For the moment, we're meeting on Zoom (meeting link (NU account signin required)). With a little luck, we'll be back on campus soon.

Collaborative notes

During our section meetings, I (Aaron) will try to maintain some notes and agenda items in this etherpad. If you haven't used it before, Etherpad is a lightweight collaborative text editing tool that I prefer for this kind of thing. I encourage you to join me there and collaborate on the note-taking. Indeed, I suggest that we rotate the responsibility of lead note-taker around the group each week (we'll see what people think of that during our first session).

Discussion memos

Graduate students in the course are required to submit discussion memos via Canvas no later than Tuesday at 9pm CT each week (with the exception of weeks 1 and 10). The memos are intended to facilitate digestion of the reading/viewing materials ahead of each discussion section. They should be short (400-500 words) and should synthesize central arguments and/or themes of readings/viewings. You may also utilize the readings to develop novel, synthetic claims and/or suggest areas for further discussion. During the quarter you may skip up to two discussion memos with no consequences.

I also expect everyone to read the memos authored by other members of the class each week (and may wind up shuffling some of the Canvas settings to facilitate this).

Lead discussant role

Each graduate student will also be required to serve as a lead discussant for at least one section meeting during the quarter. Details and expectations will be discussed in the first section meeting. Basically, the lead discussant role will be to lead-off the conversation by elaborating some core themes, concerns, and/or topics in order to spark further discussion. You may draw these themes, concerns, and/or topics from the readings, lectures, and discussion memos. Lead discussants will be asked to limit their opening remarks to about 10 minutes, after which time we will open up the conversation to the entire group. Lead discussants will also be invited to synthesize any key takeaways and discussion points at the conclusion of the section meeting. Please note that serving as lead discussant does not imply that you are expected to dominate the conversation!

Your role in the Wikipedia Assignment

We'll talk about this during the first week of section. I'll update here accordingly.

Final project: Original research project

Graduate students in the course will be required to complete an original research project. This project may take the form of (1) a detailed research plan/proposal; (2) a replication/revisit of an important and influential study; (3) a completed original research manuscript (i.e., a "submission-ready" draft of a journal article or conference paper). Please note that you are also required to submit an abstract/proposal for the project and you must submit a new abstract/proposal at least two weeks before the project due date if you want to change the topic/direction substantially.

Project abstract/proposal due: February 22

Completed project due: March 16

Schedule

Week 2: Definitions (01.13)

Lead discussant

Week 3: Participation (01.20)

Lead discussant

Week 4: Newcomers (01.27)

Lead discussant

Week 5: Identity (02.03)

Lead discussant

Richard Zhang

Week 6: Governance (02.10)

Lead discussant

Emily Andrews

Week 7: Quality (02.17)

Lead discussant

Katherine O'Toole

Week 8: Profit (02.24)

Lead discussant

Week 9: AI (03.03)

Lead discussant