COURSE OUTLINE This is what the Unit Communication, Activism and Social Change looked like in 2014/15.
COMMUNICATION, ACTIVISM & SOCIAL CHANGE Clive McGoun
The unit uses 2 platforms through the year:
Moodle: for the formal curriculum and assessment information including required readings and tasks. This is our initial information centre.
The Hub: a syndication site that draws in posts from all student blogs to a central hub. This is our production centre. Unfortunately, Moodle is a closed platform. You need to be registered with the unit before you can see what the unit contains on Moodle. What I have done below is copy the first level of information (the other levels give the slides we use in the sessions) to give you an idea of the curriculum. The Hub has, I think, been the most exciting part of this year’s work. Have a good browse around the work that has been completed by the students. It will give you a real taste of the kind of things that can be achieved.
http://www.clivemcgoun.net/commactivism/
From Moodle About this unit
Citizens around the world have been using communication technologies to push for social and political change since the advent of the printing press. However, the speed, reliability, ubiquity and low cost of recent digital media have greatly increased the reach and scope of contemporary activism for social change. From the use of Twitter to amplify protests in the Middle East and Moldova to the thousands of third sector organisations creating Facebook accounts in the hopes of attracting supporters, the media are awash with stories and anecdotes about the power and potential of digital activism. In order to move beyond the anecdotes and media headlines, this unit examines the dynamics, practices, misunderstandings and possible futures of the use of communication technologies for activism and positive social change. During this first term we will concentrate our attention on the ways in which global movements for social change have been effected and shaped by digital communications tools. By understanding the tools that have been used in these global arenas, how they've been used and with what effects, we will be better prepared to apply our understandings (and skills) to more local contexts. We'll do that in term two. Learning Outcomes On completing the unit you will be able to: 1. discuss contemporary communication activism demonstrating a detailed understanding of its history, terminology, contexts and effects 2. present methodologically valid case studies of specific practices of communication activism 3. Use the theories and concepts covered to reflect on the contemporary practice of communication activism 4. Use tools of digital activism to plan, execute, and evaluate campaigns for social change
Two assignments will measure the extent to which you have been able to meet these outcomes: 5. A Critical Report examining the use of communication technologies in activism in specific contexts (learning outcomes 1 & 3) 50%
6. An Online Portfolio: including case studies, digital media tools and commentary reflecting on theory/practice (learning outcomes 2 & 4) 50%
Announcements
Important Information about Submitting Your Assignments
Please read this before submitting your assignment. Check Your Originality Report Here Use this link to create your originality report. An originality report checks the similarity of your work to: o
Internet resources
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Journal articles
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Other Students' work
Please do not use this link to submit your final assignment for marking. The final assignment link can be found below.
Assignment 1 Critically examine one or two examples of how digital communication has engendered new possibilities for individuals and organisations involved in activism and advocacy to engage with and influence the public. Your essay should not exceed 3,000 words. (Learning Outcomes 1, 3) If you are submitting your assignment on your Blog, you do not need to use Turnitin. Submitting Files to Turnitin This document takes you carefully through the stages for submitting your assignment electronically.
Assignment 2: Online Portfolio
This document explains the different components of the online portfolio and offers some suggestions as to how you might best complete them. You need not worry about submitting your work on the portfolio through Turnitin. Clearly, however, university regulations regarding plagiarism still apply to the work you publish on your portfolio. o
Unit Marking Criteria This is the marking rubric I will use when assessing your work.
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Feedback Guide This document explains how to access the online feedback that I will be providing on your work.
September - Introductions
In this session I will introduce the unit - the course components as well as the terms and tools that we will be using throughout the year. We'll also discuss expectations and look at the assignments for the unit.
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What if Money Was No Object Alan Watts gives some advice to graduates about work after education. The advice is healthy, not only for graduates, but to all of us as we make decisions about what to do; and not least, what we plan to do on this unit.
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Tools for Activism Here is the toolbox that we will be learning about and learning how to use through the year.
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Introduction | Lecture slides View the slides for the session 'Introductions.'
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Net Smart: How to Thrive Online Looking for something to read before the unit begins? Have a look at the unit bibliography and this chapter by Howard Rheingold. Howard Rheingold introduces his latest book with a plea to intelligent internet use. Some of the questions that Rheingold explores are: Why is digital literacy such an important concept and series of skills? Why is participation impossible without collaboration? What is 'crap detection' and how do you develop it? Difficulty: 1
6 October - A Virtual Revolution
This session establishes the context against which our studies on the unit are placed: the emergence of the Web and what it has meant for the ways in which we communicate, and act, in the 21st century.
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Virtual Revolution: Slides
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The Great Levelling This BBC programme was made in 2012 and charts two decades of profound change since the invention of the World Wide Web, weighing up the huge benefits and the unforeseen downsides . This first programme examines the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia, and YouTube.
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Sharing Anchors a Community Chapter 2 of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008). Difficulty: 1
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Social Network Analysis This introduction to social network analysis, written by community sociologist Barry Wellman, defines what is meant by a social network and explores what this perspective can offer the student of society. Difficulty: 2
13 October - Social Media and Social Movements
Social movements have been with us for a long time. This session examines what happened to social movements when they met with social media.
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Social Media and Social Movements | Slides View the slides of today's session
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Activism Transforms Digital: The Social Movement Perspective Anastasia Kevana's chapter from Digital Activism Decoded the New Mechanics of Change explores the relationship between social movements and digital technologies. How do social movements harness the digital and how does the digital furnish social movements? Difficulty: 1
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Peer Production, the Commons and Sharing In this article Yochai Benkler's, author of The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom looks at the development of peer to peer networks and shows how their development provided the necessary (technical) conditions for the emergence of the peer production of information, and knowledge and culture. Difficulty: 3
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BBC Radio 4 Thinking Aloud: Twitter Audio file (MP3) Laurie Taylor talks to the sociologist, Dhiraj Murthy, about his new book 'Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age'. This form of social media is now a household name, discussed for its role in political movements, national elections and natural disasters. But what's
the real significance of this 'electronically diminished turn to terseness' as Murphy describes it? Using case studies including citizen journalism and health, his groundbreaking study deciphers the ways in which Twitter is re-making contemporary life.
20 October - Mobile Media and the New Social Movements
This session looks at how mobile devices (especially camera phones) connected to the internet have threatened the powerful by releasing and circulating information during disputed incidents.
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Lecture Slides View the session slides here
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Michael Channan: Tales of A Video Blogger This volume looks at video, activism and the art of small media from the perspective of a video blogger who is also a.seasoned documentary filmmaker and Professor of Film and Video at the University of Roehampton. The Chapters 'Video Rising', 'On the Pre-History of Digital Activism' and 'Video, Activism, and the Art of Small Media' are of particular value at this point of the unit. Difficulty: 1
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Learning From YouTube: Using New Media to Harness Global Activism Alexandra Juhasz‘s book, Learning From YouTube, is pretty innovative. First, it's all about the ways in which YouTube can be used to enhance education and activism. Second, the book is an online “video book,” published by MIT Press, that uses a combination of text and YouTube videos to illustrate its points.
The 'book' is split into a number of tours. Choose one tour from the video book and be prepared to report back to the group on your learning. Difficulty: 1 o
The Power of the Mobile Phone In this Chapter Brannon Callum charts the use of mobile phones for digital activism. He offers theoretical and economic theories on the uptake of the mobile for activism and explores a number of cases where the use of the mobile has been decisive. Difficulty: 2
27 October - Directed Study
You will use this week to complete an extended case study. Details to follow.
3 November - Media use in Tunisia and Egypt
Video Activism: A Typology Before looking at the use of communication technologies in the Arab Spring, we will review the work you did last week and integrate it into a framework for understanding different kinds of video activism and advocacy that are becoming increasingly common.
By sharing hope and sorrow in the free public space of the Internet during 2011, people in Tunisia and Egypt began to express themselves free from the control of governments and the monopolisation of corporations. Through coming together and through the networks that were formed, new dreams were born and spread rapidly. The period became known as the 'Arab Spring'. o
Video Activism: Slides Here are the slides used in the first part of this session.
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Media Use in Tunisia and Egypt Here are the slides from the second part of today's session.
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Guardian: Middle East Protests Time Line This is an excellent hyperlinked timeline of the events in the Arab Spring.
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Further Reading/Resources Here are a number of online articles and blog posts that deal with the issues covered in this week's session.
10 November - Los Indignad@s
In this session we chart the intense activity, the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, and the global networking of a movement which became known as 15-M. We also look closer at home and begin to understand how we can harness the power of networks to effect social change.
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Mobilisation through online networks: Los indignados An article that examines the social and political characteristics of the indignados. Difficulty: 2
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Spain’s indignados and the mediated aesthetics of nonviolence Excellent article by John Posthill that examines the political aesthetics evident in the indignados movement in Spain. By aesthetics he's referring to‘a set of principles underlying the subcultural work and style of a particular protest movement’. Difficulty: 3
17 November - The Occupy Movement
After Los Indignados set up camp in the Plaza del Sol, a number of other cities around the world also began to occupy a mixture of spaces and places, and 'spaces of flows' on the internet. This hybrid space - on&offline - allowed both the shared experience of face-to-face activism as well as enabling that experience to be communicated to the entire world, and in that way, brought the world into the movement.
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Communicating Global Activism Though written ten years ago, this paper provides a very good overview of the concepts and the development of tools for digital activism. Difficulty: 2
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Occupy Wall Street on the Public Screens of Social Media Here's an article that explores the effects of the perpetual participation afforded by digital activism with particular reference to Occupy Wall Street. Difficulty: 3
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Permanent Revolution: Occupying Democracy In this article Douglas Rushkoff looks at the ways in which new media have shaped the Occupy movements. Difficulty: 2
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Further Reading/Resources A great deal is being written and published about the various occupy movements throughout the world. The following list is a partial one but contains those works that I think are essential reading.
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Session Slides: Occupy Wall Street Here are the slides that guided our discussions in the session.
24 November - Crisis and Communication
The digital networks that have grown to become vital to social movements have also been harnessed in attempts to alleviate some of the world's most intractable problems: those caused through natural disasters and poverty.
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Crisis Communication: Session Slides Here are the slides on crisis communication: digital humanitarianism.
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Finding Community Through Information and ICT during disaster events This article looks at crisis communications as a way of building community through moments of emergency and disaster relief. Difficulty: 1
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Crowdsourcing goes mainstream in typhoon response Interesting article from Nature looking at crowdsourcing during the typhoon in the Philippines. Difficulty: 1
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Introduction to Crisis Communication Theory
from: Sellnow, Timothy L., and Matthew W. Seeger. 2013. Theorizing crisis communication.
1 December - Building Civil Society
In this session we begin to focus on the ways in which the political landscape has changed to privilege the personal over the organised collective. Whilst this has not been a direct result of the digitisation of everything, digital tools have had an influence. We begin to look at the consequences of this for the activist in pressure groups. o
Mobile Phones and Civil Society How can mobile phones improve people's lives and engender a vibrant public sphere?
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Tech Tools for Activists This booklet, written by the organisation 'Tech Tools for Activism' provides an introduction to the effective use of technology for activism, with links to step-by-step guides and further information.
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Evgeny Morozov on Technological 'Solutionism' Are we facing the inexorable decline of the 'public sphere' in favour of the technologically enhanced individual and private sphere? In this talk sociologist Evgeny Morozov frames this debate as the risks and limitations of the "solutionism" of the 'smart' future, where the temptation to enrol technology companies rather than governments in solving all of the world's greatest problems will only increase. (the talk was given to a Dutch-language online magazine - but it is in English)
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People, Power and Social Change Here is the material that we used in the session today. Clicking on an image will take you to the web page for that image.
8 December - Review and Assessment Guidelines
In this session we will review the unit, looking at the cases, concepts, tools, stories and theories that we have encountered in the past three months. We will also look at how best to approach the first assessment and discuss the ideas that you already have. For this unit you can choose either to submit your assignment through Turnitin or publish it to your personal blog. If you choose to use Turnitin you will prepare and submit your assignment as a Wordprocessed file. If you choose to use your blog to prepare and submit your assignment do
so using a password protected page. Email me the password before the submission deadline. If I don't receive a password before the deadline date/time, your work will be considered 'late'. o
Review Slides View the slides used in today's session.
15 December - Tutorial Support
This session will run in room 3.87 (computer lab) from 11.00. Please work on your plans for the first assignment. I will have individual tutorials with each of you in order to help you with those plans and the drafting process.
12 January - What's Ahead
A new year and a new term. In this session we will look at the content of this term's work and in particular at how we will build our portfolio on our personal blog sites. I will also allow some time for individual tutorials for those in need of support prior to submitting assignment 1.
19 January - Tools, Information & Influence
In this session we begin to look at communication activism as a form of 'information and influence' campaign. We also return to our blogs and begin to work on the tools and skills we need to make them effective.
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Slides: Information and Influence View the slides from today's session.
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Creative Task Complete this task and display your results on your blog.
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Why I Blog Andrew Sullivan on why blogs herald a new era for journalism.
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A Blogger's Polemic Ted Henken examines blogging in Cuba.
26 January: Campaigning
Today I will set three creative tasks and give some input on strategy in information campaigns.
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Blog Posts: Blogging A task designed for you to reflect on the nature of blogging as a political/campaign tool.
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Images: Create Your Own Get your cameras out!
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Magazine Mock Up Working with images.
2 February - Visualising Information for Activism
How do you influence issues using information, design, networks and technologies? How do you capture people's attention? How do you make them change their minds or modify their behaviour? How do you organise and present information in such a way that it has the kind of impact that makes the world a better place?
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Session Slides: Visualising Information for Activism Here are the slides that we used in today's session.
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Case Study: Greenpeace Here is a campaign poster used by Greenpeace in 2005.
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Find out as much as you can about the poster and the campaign.
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Analyse the poster using some of the ideas we explored in the session.
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Report your findings in a blog post.
Campaign: Debt Here is a creative task for you to complete this week and add to your portfolio.
9 February - Culture Jamming
This week we will take a historical journey to examine the origins, in practical and theoretical terms, of the kinds of critical pranksterism that flood so much of our media today. We will look at how the methods used are and could be used in our advocacy campaigns today.
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Session Sites Here are the Websites I referred to in today's session.
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Case Study: Rtmark Here's is a question that follows up the work we have done today. Answer it on your blog. Remember that this is part of your portfolio assessment.
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Maps Here is a creative task for you to complete this week and add to your portfolio.
16 February
Directed study week. There will be no face-to-face session this week. Instead you will work on a case study for your portfolio. Details to follow.
23 February - Forms of Influence
The effectiveness of an advocacy campaign is clearly shaped by its communicative power. However, external factors (political and social events, even the weather) can affect it too. Today we will look at how to use the concepts we have introduced so far to build strategies for influencing people. We will ask: what is the appropriate form of appeal (rational, emotional or moral)? How can we best balance the fundamental factors of communication (information, design, networks, technology) to increase impact and effectiveness? o
Session Slides + Notes Here are the slides we looked at today and the notes which guided our discussion.
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Create a Campaign In the first session of this unit way back in September 2013 we talked about issues that you feel passionate about: the issues where you think change is necessary to make the world a better place. I want to turn back to those issues today and think strategically how we might create campaigns around them.
30 February - Connected and Contagious
This week I want to introduce the ideas of two influential books which were published in the last five years: Christiakis and Fowler (2010) Connected, and Berger (2013) Contagious. o
Lecture Slides: Contagious and Connected View the slides from today's session.
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Crafting Contagious Workbook Here's the useful workbook accompanying 'Contagious' which suggests ways of working through a campaign using the STEPPES framework.
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Task: Connected Here is some reading and writing for your blog.
2 March - Techniques to help people get your message
Today we will examine a number of techniques that are used by advocates and activists to help people to understand their message. o
Lecture Slides: The Message View the slides from today's session.
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Readings and Resources Here are some resources to follow up on this session.
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Your Blogs Please make a note of your blog on this virtual wall.
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Task: Campaign Reviews Here's a task for you to complete on your blog related to this week's work.
9 March - Telling the Story of Your Campaign
In this session we will explore some techniques that can be used to better tell your story in order to increase your audience's understanding of the issue.
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Slides: Telling the Story Here are the slides we looked at in today's session.
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Create your Campaign in Comic Format Here's a task for your blog. Create a short cartoon highlighting the issues that your campaign deals with.
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Task: Create your own Infographic Use the techniques we have seen today to develop your own infographic.
16 March - Opening Up the Detail
Once you have told the central story of your campaign it's a good idea to allow your audience to explore the detail. Today's session will explore some techniques which enable you to do just that. o
Slides: Opening Up the Detail View the slides from today's session.
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Further Reading/Resources Here are some sources relevant to today's session.
23 March - Review
We will use this session to review our work this term and examine your blog portfolios in the light of the assignment brief.
30 March - Final Tutorials Remember, portfolios are due on 1 May.