A course with Howard Rheingold

Welcome to this workspace. It's a resource -- you'll find the syllabus and course schedule here with handy links to online texts, due dates and requirements for assignments, the class notes that you will collectively post. This syllabus is publicly readable, but only students in this course can edit it. This workspace also links to a private workspace, readable and editable only by students in this course. As individuals and in teams, you will use the private workspace to post a personal profile, organize collaborative group projects, record notes on class discussions, and maintain a personal learning journal.

Communication 117/217
2:15-5:05, Tuesdays, Room 120, Building 60
Stanford University, Winter 2008
Instructor: Howard Rheingold howard@rheingold.com
Office: Bldg 120 (McClatchy), Rm 300A
Office hours: Tuesday afternoons 1:00-2:00 and by appointment

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Welcome to the Workspace

This is the home page for Stanford Digital Journalism Course.

Please feel free to add or modify pages -- even this one -- as you see fit. That's the idea of a Workspace.

• If you'd like an introductory tour of the Socialtext Workspace, start here.
• Every once in a while, visit What's new (next to Quick jump, at the top) to see recent changes and additions, and see Socialtext Documentation for tips to use this Workspace.
• Click the Edit button to edit any page you're viewing.

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About This Course

Over the past two decades, shifts in media technologies, institutional structures and the organization of public life have combined to change the practice of journalism. This course explores these shifts, with an eye to seeing how they affect journalism's role in society. At the same time, the class will introduce you to the techniques of journalism in digital media and offer you conceptual and practical tools with which to join the fray. By the end of the course, you should have a clear sense of the various ways journalists have taken up digital media and a sense of how you might use those media yourself. You should also gain a broad understanding of the ways in which recent social and economic developments have changed both the practices of journalists and the nature of the publics with whom they communicate. The role of the journalist in the public sphere is emphasized -- journalism is unique among the professions in its responsibility to provide the information and context necessary for free people to govern themselves. You will actively blog, wiki, RSS, tag, Twitter, flickr, create mashups and podcasts. Each class meeting will involve collaborative work in small teams, class discussions, hands-on work with participatory media, and brief lectures. This year, both of the required papers and the student group projects, including the use of RSS and social bookmarking to conduct research, will focus on introducing community features and functions to iStanford -- modifications of the existing news site designed by students in this class will be implemented next quarter. On occasion, we'll have guests. (Craig "Craigslist" Newmark and USA Today technology reporter Janet Kornblum have agreed to visit our class this year; other guests will be annnounced).

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Textbooks

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.

Course Reader: Available at the Bookstore.

Academic Computing Resources at Stanford: While this course has a strong analytical character, direct experience with online publishing skills will require a basic familiarity with Stanford's resources for creating and posting materials to the web. These can be found online here

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Assignments and Expectations

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Entrance to student private pages here

Sign up here to present readings and facilitate discussion

Entrance to class blog here

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Part 1: The Technological, Social, and Institutional Contexts of Digital Journalism

1: Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Introductions: Who are we, where do we think we're going in this class?

Key Questions:
Who are we and why are we in this class? Where is "news" in the digital environment? How do we characterize the present moment and the immediate future in regard to the practice of journalism? What can we do at Stanford in 2008 to advance journalism in the network age? Can we envision building a platform today for experimenting with tomorrow's journalism? What are our expectations for such a platform?

Introduction to blogging; introduction to the class wiki; create personal blogs and wiki pages.

Multimedia story in newly redesigned iStanford was picked up by the New York Times
Mindmob: Investigative Aggregation

Write notes on your personal wiki page about this class and your personal expectations for the course

Words to know

2: Tuesday, January 15

What was journalism? What was "the public?" What are digital media? What are its publics?

Readings

• Robert Darnton, "Writing news and telling stories," Daedalus 104 Spring 1975: 175-197. (Reader)
• Pablo Bocszowski, Digitizing the News, Chapter 1. (Reader)
• Bruno Giussani, "A new media tells different stories." First Monday 2.4 (1999).Available online(Also in reader)
• Kovach and Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism, pp. 1-35

Web Resources

• The Dewey-Lippman Debate Today: Negotiating the Divide Between Participatory and Elistist Models of Democracy
• The Rogue Columnist,What's really wrong with newspapers
• Remarks by Tom Curley, President and CEO, The Associated Press _— Online News Association Conference, _Nov. 12, 2004
• Dan Froomkin, "IF Stone's lessons for Internet Journalism"
• Economist on coffee houses and the origins of the public sphere

Key Questions:

How are journalistic routines, industry structures, and technology related to journalism's public role? How are changes in technology, editorial philosophies, roles of producer and consumer of information, changing the nature of news and journalism?

Blogging II and Wiki work II Blogging rhetoric; personal learning journal; note-taking
RSS: setting up an aggregator.

Words to know

Part 2: Mass Journalism in Transition

3: Tuesday, January 22

When old journalism met new media

Readings:

• Philip E. Agre, Find Your Voice: Writing For a Webzine (AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY)
• Amazoning The News (Reader) (see site too: http://www.hypergene.net/ideas/amazon_1.html)
• Jane Stevens, Taking the Big Gulp Reports, Winter, 2006
• Eric Alterman, The Death and Life of the American Newspaper (ONLINE ONLY)
• Tim O'Reilly, "Journalism is Burning, or How Breaking News is Broken," August, 2007 (online only)

Web Resources:

. Mark Deuze, Towards Professional Participatory Storytelling
. Ryan Sholin, 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head
. The Post’s 10 Web Principles
• Flickring The News (online only)
. The BBC's Fifteen Web Principles
. How newspapers can thrive on the World Wide Web
• Timothy L. O'Brien, "The Newspaper of the Future," New York Times, June 26, 2005
• The elements of digital storytelling
• Center for Digital Storytelling web site
• see especially
• WBEZ Chicago, This American Life

Key Questions:

What kinds of news forms have emerged in the digital environment? How do they shift mass journalism's relationship to its audience? How can you "tell a story" in digital media?

Advanced RSS Setting up news radars Tagging 1* Social bookmarking with del.icio.us
Wiki III group projects

Words to know

4: Tuesday, January 29

The Emergence of Collaborative Citizen Journalism

Readings:

• Suw Charman, The Changing Role of Journalists in a World Where Everyone Can Publish
. Online Citizen Journalism Now Undeniably Mainstream
• Yu, Yeon-Jung, OhMyNews Makes Every Citizen a Reporter
• Dan Gillmor, Citizen Media: A Progress Report
. Muckraking Blogger Wins Award

View in class:

• News in 2010

Web Resources:

. Principles of Citizen Journalism
• Howard Kurtz, Blogging without Warning
• NewsCloud
. Citizen Journalism Defined?
. Digg, Reddit, Netscape: The Wisdom of Crowds or Mob Rule?
. Rebecca Blood, A Few Thoughts on Journalism and What Can Weblogs Do About it
. Citizen Journalism Opening Up Political Space in Africa
. Mediachannel
• Freedom Forum
• Jim Romenesko at Poynter
• Poynter
• Editor and Publisher
• Jeff Jarvis: BuzzMachine.com
• J.D. Lasica, "News That Comes to You," Online Journalism Review, January 23, 2003
• Jon Udell, "Tag Mania Sweeps the Web," July 20, 2005
• Timo Hannay, "Tagging and Participative Journalism," You're It – a Blog on Tagging
* Jay Rosen, The People Formerly Known as the Audience
* James Poniewozik (2008)The Beltway-Blog Battle

Key Questions:
What role do networks of individuals, think tanks and other intermediaries play in shaping the news? What news-shaping forces are emerging from search, tagging, blogging, and other Web-based media?

*Twitter Getting started with Twitter as a tool for journalists

Craig Newmark

Words to know

Part Three: New Publics, New Journalistic Forms

5: Tuesday, February 5

Publics evolving? Virtual Communities and Online Social Networks

Readings:

. Barry Wellman, An Introduction to Networks in the Global Village
. Participation online -- consumer, commenter, contributor, commentator
. Mark Deuze, "The Web and its journalisms: considering the consequences of different types of newsmedia online," New Media and Society, 5.2 (2003): 203-230 (Reader)
. Amyjo Kim, Nine Timeless Design Strategies

Web Resources:

. Spammers, Trolls and Stalkers: The Pandora’s Box of Community
. Building Communities with Software
. Online Community Builder's Purpose Checklist
. 7 tips on how to run a successful community
. Brad King, 8 rules: What it takes to build an online community
. Yaniv Golan, (2008) "Incentives in Online Communities"<What are the ways that online communities can overcome participation inequality and increase users’ participation?">

Key Questions:

How are networks, communities, and publics distinct, and where do they intersect and interact? What principles and dynamics must be kept in mind when envisioning community affordances for news media? What unique affordances for journalism does the web offers

Tagging II: Photo sharing with Flickr

Words to know

6: Tuesday, February 12

Journalists and Community: Adding Participation to News Media

Readings:

. Craig Newmark: Community Building on the Web: Implications for Journalism
. Jay Rosen: Beat Reporting with a Social Network and These Beat Reporters Will Try the Social Network Way
. Best Newspaper blogs for comments, community and readability
. How are visitors using comments?
. Ten ways newspapers can improve comments

Web resources:

. Here's how reporters use Twitter
. "Introducing journalists to Twitter:http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/02/16/introducing-journalists-to-twitter-what-id-do-differently/
. Debating the Events of September 11th: Discursive and Interactional Dynamics in Three Online Fora
. Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington's Newest Watchdogs
. Should Newspapers Become Local Blog Networks?
. New York Times Goes Social

Key Questions:
Who is your publication's public, how might they want to be involved? What levels of participation does your publication need, want, allow? What kinds of planning, technology, human resources are necessary to launch a successful community around a news publication? What are the relationships between consumers, commenters, community members, citizen reporters, moderators, professional journalists, editors; how are these roles codified institutionally and afforded by software? How are the institutional, technological, and social aspects of a news community reflected in marketing, technical planning, and community management?

7: Tuesday, February 19

Rethinking "The Public": The Origins and Nature of the Public Sphere

Readings:

• Nancy Fraser. “Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1991. 109-142. (Reader)
• David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, Pp 3-17 (Reader)
• Rosen, Jay, "The Action of the Idea," The Idea of Public Journalism, Theodore L. Glasser, ed., New York: Guilford, 1999, pp 21-48 (Reader)
• Kovach and Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism, pp. 36-69

Web resources:

• Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention
. Brief Habermas quotes

Key Questions:
What are the relationships among publics, media, and democracy? What might the role of journalism be in a world of multiple publics?

Mark Glaser

Words to know

8: Tuesday, February 26

The Public Sphere in The Internet Era

Readings:

• Michael Schudson, “Click here for democracy: a history and critique of an information-based model of citizenship.” Democracy and new media. Eds. Henry Jenkins, David Thorburn and Brad Seawell. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. 49-60. (Reader)
• Philip E. Agre, “Growing a democratic culture: John Commons on the wiring of civil society.” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 61-67. (Reader)
• Pieter Boeder, "Habermas Heritage: the future of the public sphere in the network society," First Monday, volume 10, number 9 ( September 2005)
. Cass R. Sunstein, "The Daily We: Is the Internet really a blessing for democracy?." Boston Review, October 20, 2003 (Reader)

Web resources:

. Voterwatch.org
. Rolling Stone comment thread
• Democratic Deliberation and Mobilization on the Internet
• Debatepedia
• Blogging Populism and the Political Establishment (esp the comment thread)
• Campaigns Wikia: policy
• MoveOn.Org
• Howard Dean’s Campaign Site
• City of Palo Alto
• Deliberative Polling

Key Questions:
What kinds of "publics" are emerging in and around digital media? What kinds of power struggles erupted when broadcast channels were confronted by the emergence of many-to-many media? What role does online discourse play in the future of democracy – and what role does journalism play in digital debate and deliberation?

Buley covesr Gates
Pedregal Multimedia/Map STory

Guest workshop by Jane Stevens: Collaborative Mapping/Map Mashups
One of Jane's recent projects: Elephant Seal Love

9: Tuesday, March 4

Commons Based Peer Production and Open Source Journalism

Readings

• Yochai Benkler, 2006, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp 1-34. (Reader)
• Thomas Goetz, “Open Source Everywhere,” Wired 11.11 (November, 2003) available online
• Open Source Journalism
• Constructing a framework to enable an open-source reinvention of journalism

Web Resources:

. Jay Rosen, 2007, Citizen Journalism Wants You
• Trebor Scholz and Paul Hartzog: Toward a critique of the social web
. Gannett to Crowdsource News
. Crowdsourcing: Gannett Roundup: The Blogs
. Networks of Protest Block Bush at Stanford

Key Questions:
How are the dynamics of open source production processes affecting the ways journalists serve the public? How might social accounting technologies like eBay's or Slashdot's reputation systems shape the gathering, evaluation, dissemination, and analysis of news? How do crowdsourcing, social networks, and news-based communities interact?

Words to know

10: Tuesday, March 11

The Intersection of Social, Technological, Institutional: Architecture as Politics

Readings:

• David Isenberg, The Rise of the Stupid Network, 1997
• Manuel Castells, Why Networks Matter (PDF), Network Logic: Who Governs in an Interconnected World?, Helen McCarthy, Paul Miller, Paul Skidmore, eds, London: Demos, 2004, pp 221-224
• Kovach and Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism, pp. 70-110
. Lawrence Lessig, Preface to Code as Law, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three (short chunks of wikibook)

View in class:

• Open Source Video on Net Neutrality
• Another video on Net Neutrality

Web Resources:

. Craig Aaron, Guardian Unlimited, A tough pill to swallow
• Architectural Principles of the Internet (ftp)
• Manuel Castells, "Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society," _ International Journal of Communication_, Vol 1. 2007. PDF
. Lawrence Lessig, Code Is Law (entire wikibook)

Key Questions:
How are social processes being written into and performed by computer code? In what ways is the architecture of communication media a political matter? What are the implications of these phenomena for journalists? Given the new organizational, economic and discursive forms associated with network technologies, can journalists still serve a single public? If technology changes almost everything about the institutions and practices of journalism, what will remain unchanged? What should remain unchanged? How do financial pressures shape the potential of online journalism to serve the public? Do new media free us from the problems of media consolidation?

The first hour of class will be devoted to discussion of this week's readings. The remainder of the class will consist of team presentations. Each of the teams that have been working together for the quarter will present the critical evaluation of existing community features on university news sites and their plan for adding such features to iStanford, drawing upon the best ideas from the papers, blog entries, team bookmarks, created by the class during the quarter. Professors Grimes will join Professor Rheingold as respondents, as well as a representative of the technical developer who will be modifying iStanford to include community features next quarter.

Words to know