296A. Participatory Media/Collective Action

Three hours of seminar discussion and hands-on practice per week. This participatory class explores political activism in the Net context, as well as key aspects such as mass media, political communications, and smart mobs: emerging forms of technology-enabled collective actions. We will read and discuss issues, theories and real world examples from the US, Philippines, Korea, Mexico, China, and elsewhere. We will focus on blogging, online forums and other emerging media forms such as podcasting, photo-sharing, tagging, RSS, wiki-based communities and read about theoretical aspects of socio-technological networks as well.

In addition to analytic readings, students will learn how to use a wiki for collaborative work, to blog and read and comment on blogs via RSS as part of the coursework, to listen to and produce podcasts. The class will directly engage in collective knowledge-gathering and construction of a public good. Students will engage in social bookmarking and collectively construct a resource wiki on class topics.