Research Paper Guidelines: CCT109H5 F All Sections 20259:Contemporary Communication Technologies

Research Paper Guidelines

Paper Goal

Your 5-page paper will demonstrate your mastery of and ability to apply course concepts and material to one of five essay prompts.

The assignment is broken into two parts.

First. you use your outlining skills to develop a response to your selected essay question. Following this first submission, you will receive actionable feedback from your TA explaining how to strengthen your outline.

Second, you will use this feedback to revise the outline and expand it into a well-written and wellargued 5-page paper.

Following submission, you will receive feedback on the final 5-page paper for CCT109. The paper and feedback will then become the foundation of the final project for CCT110 during the Winter term.

Paper Topic, Length, and Source Requirements

You must select a paper topic from one of the five prompts available below. You cannot come up with your own topic. Any paper that does not respond to one of the provided essay prompts will receive a mark of 0.

Your paper must by 5 pages in length. The shortest acceptable word length is 1250, and the longest acceptable word length is 1750. The word and page count does not include the cover page or your reference list.

Your 5-page paper must include at least 4 scholarly sources from the bibliography which follows each of the essay prompts. Scholarly sources are peer-reviewed journals and academic books (what we have been reading primarily in this course!). All these sources are available through library.utm.utoronto.ca (http://ibrary.utm.utoronto.ca). If you use scholarly sources not on this list, it is your responsibility to determine if they are a good fit for your paper, peer-reviewed, and soundly researched.

If you are bringing in any other sources or examples (like a TikTok, social media post, news story, television episode, etc.) to support the arguments you are making in your 5-page paper, these must be cited with both in-text citations and an entry in your reference list. Failure to do so is a breach of Academic Integrity.

Paper Topic Options

Question #1 - Surveillance, Privacy, and Convenience.

Surveillance in our everyday communication technologies-ranging from smart phones, to websites,l to the Internet of Things - may or may not be understood as a "cultural necessity." Discuss the tradeoffs between surveillance and privacy for two different communities. How do the benefits or pitfalls of this trade-off play out for these communities? Who can access privacy and who cannot? Why? Using evidence, your paper should take a position on whether the surveillance/privacy trade-off services or disservices your chosen communities.

Bibliography

Andrejevic, M. & Volcic, Z. (2021). Pandemic Lessons: Total Surveillance and the Post-Truth Society. The Political Economy of Communication 9(1), 4-21.

Hargittai, E. & Marwick, A. E. (2016). What can I really do?': Explaining the privacy paradox with online apathy. International Journal of Communication 10, 3737-3757.

Lyon, D., Bennett, C., Steeves, V. M., Haggerty, K. D. (2014). Transparent lives: surveillance in Canada. Athabasca University Press.

Marwick, A. E. (2012). The public domain: Social surveillance in everyday life. Surveillance & Society, 9(4), 378-393.

Nissenbaum, H. (2004). Privacy as contextual integrity. Washington Law Review, 79(1), 119-139.

Question #2-Digital Media and Work

From gig labour on Uber to branded content on TikTok, digital media platforms have transformed the nature of work in contemporary culture. Select a profession and analyze how digital media platforms have transformed the nature of work performed over the past decade. How have these platforms changed forms of income and compensation; the day-to-day schedule of work; and job security? How do these platforms generate value for themselves and their users? Use evidence to discuss how platforms have changed opportunities and labour conditions for the profession you selected.

Bibliography

Abidin, C. (2021). Mapping Internet celebrity on TikTok: Exploring attention economies and visibility labours. Cultural Science, 12(1), 77-103.

Caplan, R. & Gillespie, T. (2020). Tiered governance and demonetization: The shifting terms of labor and compensation in the platform. economy. Social Media + Society, 6(2), 1-13.

Cohen, N. S. (2015). From pink slips to pink slime: Transforming media labor in a digital age. The Communication Review, 18(2), 98-122.

Duffy, B. E. (2015). The romance of work: Gender and aspirational labour in the digital culture industries. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(4), 441-457.

Ens, N. & Márton, A. (2021). 'Sure I saw sales, but it consumed me' from resilience to erosion in the digital hustle economy. New Media & Society, 1-20.

Terranova, T. (2000). Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy. Social Text, 18(2), 3358.

Question #3-Algorithms and Knowledge

Various industries are increasingly relying on algorithms, machine learning, and artificial intelligence for quick information retrieval and decision making. What do scholars mean when they discuss the social impact of human judgement being replaced by these forms of machinic judgement? How do algorithms digitally mediate public knowledge, online discourse, and decision making? Have algorithmic processes improved or worsened how ordinary people access knowledge and information? Discuss your position and provide evidence to support your conclusion.

Bibliography

Bucher, T. (2012). Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook. New Media & Society, 14(7), 1164-1180.

Crawford, K. (2016). Can an algorithm be agonistic? Ten scenes from life in calculated publics. Science, Technology & Human Values, 41(1), 77-92.

Gillespie, T. (2014). The relevance of algorithms. In T. Gillespie, P. J. Boczkowski, K. A. Foot (Eds.), Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society (167-194). MIT Press.

Masuhara, D.M. (2017). Artificial intelligence and adjudication: some perspectives. Amicus Curriae, 111, 2-15.

Savolainen, L. (2022). The shadow banning controversy: perceived governance and algorithmic folklore. Media, Culture & Society, 1-19.

Question #4 -Publics, Platforms, and Visibility

The arrival of Web 2.0 in the early aughts brought with it the promise of an open, interactive, and egalitarian Internet. Still, the question remains: how do these novel digital platforms shape or challenge the notion of the public as a structural concept? Do social media networks allow for new public(s) to emerge? Do outlying ideas, groups, issues, or voices gain greater public visibility through social media platforms? Or are hegemonic power relations merely reproduced? Drawing upon one contemporary example, discuss, analyze, and support your position.

Bibliography

Hautea, S., Parks, P., Takahashi, B., & Zeng, J. (2021). Showing they care (or don't): Affective publics and ambivalent climate activism on TikTok. Social Media + Society, 7(2), 1-14.

Jackson, S. J. & Foucault Welles, B. (2016). #Hijacking #myNYPD: Social media dissent and networked counterpublics. Journal of Communication, 65(6), 932-952.

Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University Press.

Shirky, C. (2011). The political power of social media: Technology, the public sphere, and political change. Foreign Affairs, 28-41.

Singh, R. (2018). Platform. feminism: Protest and the politics of spatial organization. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 14(1).

Question #5-Social Media and Identity

From early broadcast television commercials to modern social media profiles, mass media and its various infrastructures have been critical influencers of how we construct and perform. our identities in everyday life. How do big data and the attention economy create ideas about "selfhood" and identity in today's digital culture? What is authenticity, and how is the concept used to judge and determine an individual's influence on social media platforms? Discuss the practice of identity construction in digital culture using supporting scholarship and examples.

Bibliography

Abidin, C. (2021). Mapping Internet celebrity on TikTok: Exploring attention economies and visibility labours. Cultural Science, 12(1), 77-103.

Arriagada, A. & Bishop, S. (2021). Between commerciality and authenticity: The imaginary of social media influencers in the platform. economy. Communication, Culture and Critique, 14(4), 568-586.

Hearn, A. (2017). Verified: Self-presentation, identity management, and selfhood in the age of big data. Popular Communication, 15(2), 62-77.

Khamis, S., Ang, L., & Welling, R. (2017). Self-branding, "micro-celebrity" and the rise of social media influencers. Celebrity Studies, 8(2), 191-208.

Marwick, A. E. (2015). Instafame: Luxury selfies in the attention economy. Public Culture, 27(1), 137-160.