Calendar

The syllabus is a living document and is liable to change. You will never get more reading than is listed here; readings may be swapped for something of equivalent length or less. There should be no more than ~30 pages of reading per class session, or around 1–1.5 hours of reading.

Readings hosted on libproxy.mit.edu require you to be signed in with your MIT certificates or Touchstone. Bring hard copies of the readings to class — you will need them for reading responses and discussion. Registrar deadlines and holidays are marked in the week where they fall.

Week 1

Introduction

Sep 9

What is media? (slides)

No assigned reading
ASSIGNED Syllabus quiz next class

Sep 11

Theories of media

IN CLASS AI declaration. Choose your track (support tool or conscientious objector) and say how you would be interested in using AI (if applicable).
IN CLASS Syllabus quiz

Fri Sep 11 — Registration deadline ($50 late fee).

Week 2

Information infrastructure

Sep 16

Books and print culture

Ann Blair, “Introduction” and “Epilogue” in Too Much to Know (2010)
- How did people in early modern Europe collect and search for information?
- What is the history of “information overload?”
ASSIGNED A1 “Create a dataset”

Sep 18

Libraries, archives, and information retrieval

Retrieval augmented generation, library classification schema, historical memory

Week 3

Images and evidence

Sep 23

Maps, charts, and abstraction

Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, “Who Collects the Data? A Tale of Three Maps,” MIT SERC case studies (2021)
- How are the three maps depicted in this case study similar?
- How are they different?
ASSIGNED A3.1 project pitches

Sep 25

Images and the view from nowhere

Photography, objectivity, data visualization
In class A1 Protocol pre-registration

Week 4

Networks

Sep 30

Broadcast telecommunications

Gitelman and Mullaney, “Nineteenth-Century Media Technologies,” Information: A Historical Companion (2021)
- How did the telegraph change the relationship between communication and transportation?
- Do media technologies simply represent reality, or do they help construct it?

Oct 2

The physical internet

Data centers, internet cables, and global networks
The Digital Silk Road and Facebook’s Free Basics
Assigned A3.1 presentation date

Week 5

Project proposals

Oct 7

Project proposals, day 1

DUE A3.1 project pitches (link to deck TBD)

Oct 9

Project proposals, day 2

DUE A3.1 (continued)
Introduction to qualitative methods

Fri Oct 9 — Add Date. Last day to add full-term subjects.

Week 6

Political economy of new media

Oct 14

The data economy

Janet Vertesi, “Data Free Disney,” Public Books (2023)
- Is privacy possible?
- What tradeoffs are you willing or unwilling to make for digital services?
In class Draft project proposal

Oct 16

The attention economy

Quantifying and monetizing attention
AdSense and the economic foundations of the internet
Due A1 Create a dataset (9 am, submit on Canvas)

Week 7

Online communities

Oct 21

The creator economy

Angèle Christin and Yingdan Lu, “The Influencer Pay Gap: Platform Labor Meets Racial Capitalism,” New Media & Society (2023)
- Who gets paid what for the same work, and how would you know?
- What does it take to make a pay gap visible when everyone’s rate is private?

Oct 23

Fandoms and forums

Design and governance of fan fiction
K-pop fandoms and political advocacy
DueA3.2 Project proposal and annotated bibliography (9 am, submit on Canvas)

Week 8

Platform governance

Oct 28

Content moderation

Li and Zhou, “When content moderation is not about content: How Chinese social media platforms moderate content and why it matters,” New Media and Society (2024)
- What are the benefits and risks of “ambient” content moderation?
- Should platforms moderate a video differently based on the comments around it? Why?

Oct 30

Regulating content

FCC regulation, deregulation, and Section 230
Vertical integration

Research progress meetings open Oct 28. Sign up for a 30-minute slot between Oct 28 and Nov 6 (link TBD).

Week 9

Media industries

Nov 4

Journalism and the press

Professional norms of “objectivity” and muckraking
The local news crisis
Assigned A3.5 Oral peer review presentation date.

Nov 6

Public media

Ethan Zuckerman, “The Case for Digital Public Infrastructure” (2020)
- What problem is digital public infrastructure trying to solve?
- What challenges could make digital public infrastructure difficult to create or maintain?
Due A3.3 Last day for meetings

Week 10

Oral peer reviews

Nov 11

NO CLASS Veterans Day

Nov 13

Oral peer reviews, part 1

Due A3.4 First draft of final paper
Due A3.5 Oral peer review (draft of video or PechaKucha). Verbal critiques.

Midterm oral exams run Nov 9–17. Sign up for a 30-minute slot; your one-page handout is due online 24 hours before your slot.

Week 11

Peer reviews (cont'd) and internet culture

Nov 18

Oral peer reviews, part 2

Due A3.5 Oral peer review (cont’d)

Nov 20

Memes and virality

Matilde Catanese, “The year is a dropdown menu: Platformed provenance and the viral afterlives of AI-generated retro music,” New Media and Society (2026)
- What role might debunking play in the future?
- What evidence did listeners use to prove that this was an authentic “lost” recording?

Wed Nov 18 — Drop Date. Last day to cancel full-term subjects.

Week 12

Advertising and moral panics

Nov 25

Advertising and moral panics

The mechanics of Black Friday
Comics, violent video games, and addictive technology

Nov 27

NO CLASS Thanksgiving holiday

Week 13

Future of media, and final presentations begin

Dec 2

The labor behind artificial intelligence

Suresh et al., “Participation in the age of foundation models,” ACM FAccT (2024)
In class Assign presentation days
Due A3.5 Peer review memos (9 am, submit on Canvas)

Dec 4

Final presentations, day 1

Due A3.7 Personal review
Due A3.8 Final presentation paper (9 am, submit to Canvas)
Due A3.9 Final presentations begin

Week 14

Wrap up

Dec 9

Final presentations, day 2

In class Class memes (deck link TBD)
due A3.9 Final presentation