Once You Open Your Laptop...: Final Exam

For the past week, I have been sharing insights and materials from my Technology and Culture class last semester. As I described last week, we had explored how to integrate transactional memory, collective intelligence, and participatory culture practices into the design and implementation of the class. We built collective problem solving into the class from day one, gradually formalized student's membership into teams which would acquire skills at working through challenges together, and culminated the term with a collective final exam, which would demonstrate what these teams could do when they pooled knowledge and worked together under deadline pressure. What follows is the exam, exactly as it was presented to the students. We are offering it as an example to help other educators think about how they might redesign their teaching practice to encourage students to be more effective at producing and sharing knowledge through online networks.

Teams should select three (3) of the following four (4) questions to address on the exam. Collectively, you should strive to answer the questions as fully as possible. Be sure to address each part of the question.

Responses to three (3) of these questions should be emailed to your TA no later than 3:30 pm on Wed. Dec. 5. Please be sure to list all of the members of your team who participated in responding to these questions and also identify any other people or resources you consulted with in preparing your answers.

1. In his short story, “To Market, To Market: The Re-Branding of Billy Bailey,” Cory Doctorow presents both a celebration and a sharp critique of pervasive marketing and advertising in the 21st century. Through Billy’s character development, and his interactions with Mitchell McCoy and Ronnie Ryan, Doctorow touches on many of the larger contemporary debates around “spreadable media,” advertising’s most recent “creative revolution,” and the current state of the music industry.

Through an analysis of specific quotations and overall themes in “To Market, To Market,” write an essay that answers the following questions:

How does Doctorow present “the power of youth” in advertising? How does this representation of young people relate to the various roles that youth may take in the consumption, creation, and spread of contemporary media messages?
How might the practices Doctorow depicts represent a logical next step in the evolution of the advertising industry’s relations to its consumers which Prof. Jenkins described in his lecture?
Does Doctorow portray advertising positively, negatively, or a combination of the two?
What tensions exists between “identity” and “industry” in the world of music among different players (specifically fans, artists, and record label representatives)? How does Doctorow illustrate the ways that “identity” and “industry” converge and diverge?
What assumptions does the story make about the ways consumer’s choices are influenced by those made by other consumers? What might be other ways to discuss the role of consumers in contemporary culture?

To support your claims, use at least five (5) class readings (besides “To Market, To Market”), with at least one (1) reading being from each of the following three (3) different days of class readings:

10/29 “How Does Media Spread?” 11/12 “What Will Be the Future of Advertising?” 11/14 “Are Pirates a Threat to Media Industries?”

2. In the United States, women are currently the majority of registered voters, and vote in larger numbers than men. In addition, the 2012 election ushered in a record number of women elected to the Senate. However, issues directly related to women’s rights (e.g. reproductive health, equal pay) were infrequently discussed in the recent presidential election and debates.

Two sets of political memes in 2012 focused very specifically on women’s equality issues:

“Texts from Hillary” (http://textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com/) “Binders Full of Women” (http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/)

Through an analysis of EITHER “Texts from Hillary” OR “Binders Full of Women,” address the following questions. Based on what you’ve learned from earlier discussion section activities, trace the flow of these meme across at least three (3) online communities:

Which groups most readily embraced this meme? How did these memes connect to ongoing discussions within these communities?
What kinds of commentaries do these memes make about gender inequalities and power? How are these commentaries made using elements from popular culture?
Find responses to these memes from mainstream journalists. Do they see these kinds of participatory political practices as enhancing or detracting from meaningful political discussion?
Did the meanings associated with these memes change over time as they moved across different online communities? If so, how?
How open was this meme to expressing alternative ideological perspectives?

To support your claims, use at least five (5) class readings, with at least one (1) reading being from each of the following three (3) different days of class readings:

10/24 “What Roles Do New Media Play in American Politics?” 10/29 “How Does Media Spread?” 10/31 “How Generative are Online Communities?”

3. Recent readings have focused on hopes and fears for the printed word, as well as the way narratives can extend across various media.

Describe how your group sees the format of two (2) of the following literary genres evolving over the next ten years: comic book, class textbook, religious tome, science fiction novel, technical manual, children’s picture book, newspaper or news magazine. Be specific in terms of the contexts in which they will be used, and by which communities. Keep in mind that communities are also always in flux. Address the following questions:

Which traditional functions of these publications are best served by print? What might digital publication offer that would create new value as compared to print-based counterparts?
Cite examples of current digital publishing in this space. In what ways are these experiments are offering new affordances and demonstrating new relationships to the reading public?
What economic factors might push publishers to adopt digital publication, even in those cases where there is not “value added” features?
What aspects of these traditional publishing genres are being served by grassroots producers and online communities?
What concerns might critics, such as Sven Birkerts or Nicholas Carr, raise about the movement of these functions into digital media?

To support your claims, use at least five (5) class readings, with at least one (1) reading being from each of the following three (3) different days of class readings:

10/31 “How Generative are Online Communities?” 11/26 “Is Print Culture Dying?” 11/28 “Has Networked Communication Changed the Ways We Tell Stories?”

4. Trace the rise of "Web 2.0" and which of its components can still be seen in today's web.

How was it a new paradigm? What are its key defining traits?
Cite several examples of exemplary Web 2.0 companies and the ways they relate to their consumers.
Discuss the relationship of Web 2.0 to other key concepts from the class, especially participatory culture, collective intelligence, and circulation. What aspect of participatory culture are absorbed into Web 2.0 practices, what remains outside of commercial logic, and what are core sources of tension between Web 2.0 and these more grassroots practices?
Drawing on critics of Web 2.0, including Geert Lovink and Jenkins/Ford/Green, discuss what concerns people have raised about these emerging corporate practices. Which of these criticism do you agree with and which would you refute or qualify?
Does the current incarnation of the web facilitate discussion, self-expression and civic engagement?

To support your claims, use at least five (5) class readings, with at least one (1) reading being from each of the following three (3) different days of class readings:

11/5 “Have There Been Twitter Revolutions?” 11/7 “What is Web 2.0?” 11/14 “Are Pirates a Threat to Media Industries?”