Data Driven Cultures
Professor Jen Jack Gieseking American Studies 311
Trinity College :: Spring 2016 Room LIB02 :: M/W 8.30-9.45
Office Hours @ W 11:30- 2:30 & by appt
Big data and digital methods, such as changes in social media privacy laws and advances in mapping and network analysis, are changing financial markets, political campaigning, and higher education while becoming commonplace in our lives. Our daily existence is increasingly structured by code and data, from the algorithms that time our traffic lights to those that filter our search criteria and record our thoughts and ideas. In this course, we explore the possibilities, limitations, and implications of using digital methods and analytics to study issues that affect our everyday lives through a social scientific approach. We pay special attention to the ways we collect, trust, analyze, portray, and use data, most especially the tools and meanings involved in data visualization and modeling.
This course tackles a number of cutting-edge issues and questions that confront society today: What sorts of questions can be asked and answered using digital and computational methods to rethink our relationships to data and what can data can show us about the world? How do we construct models to help us better understand social phenomena and associated data? What is data, and how do we know it’s reliable? How do these methods complement or challenge traditional methodologies in the humanities and social sciences? Students will learn how to apply a critical lens for understanding and evaluating what big data and digital tools, methods, and analytics can and cannot bring to the study of society. Students will gain an understanding of how to use and to continue to learn about different data visualization software in order to become educated about an issue and share that knowledge publicly.
TEXTS
REQUIRED:
- Pomerantz, Jeffrey. 2015. Metadata. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Yau, Nathan. 2013. Data Points: Visualization That Means Something. Hoboken: Wiley.
- Note: all other readings will be provided in the course packet or as handouts.
OPTIONAL:
- Brunton, Finn, and Helen Nissenbaum. 2015. Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
- Hu, Tung-Hui. 2015. A Prehistory of the Cloud. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY & ACADEMIC ACCOMODATIONS
Students of Trinity College are held to the Student Integrity Contract, which can be found in full in the Student Handbook. Your work will be graded according to the rubric designed by your instructor. Cheating and plagiarizing will be dealt with according to university guidelines. Respect and responsibility are core to your life as a Trinity student—enjoy applying, developing, and honing them in our time in this course. If you have a documented disability and have been approved for academic accommodations, or would like to be approved for accommodations, speak directly to me during hours over the first two weeks of the semester and/or contact Lori Clapis, Disability Coordinator, at Lori.Clapis@trincoll.edu.
TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE
I :: Critical Data Studies through the Social Data Sciences and Digital Humanities
Mon. 1/25 Introduction to the course
Wed. 1/27 Readings:
☐ Pentland, Alex. 2013. “The Data-Driven Society.” Scientific American 309 (4) (October 1): 78–83. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1013-78.
☐ McPherson, Tara. 2009. “Introduction: Media Studies and the Digital Humanities.” Cinema Journal 48 (2): 119–23.
☐ Johnson, Jeffrey Alan. 2014. “From Open Data to Information Justice.” Ethics and Information Technology 16 (4): 263–74.
Mon. 2/1 Readings:
☐ Pomerantz, J. 2015. “Introduction.” Metadata. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1-18.
☐ Pomerantz, J. 2015. “Definitions.” Metadata. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 19-64.
Wed. 2/3 Lab & Readings :: Data Scraping
☐ Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. Excerpt from “The Right to Research.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 4 (2): 167-168.
☐ Marres, Noortje, and Esther Weltevrede. 2013. “Scraping the Social?” Journal of Cultural Economy 6 (3): 313–35.
☐ < ONLINE > Holmes, Harlo. 2014. Harlo Holmes : Deep Lab Lecture Series. Deep Lab Lecture Series. New York, NY: Eyebeam. https://vimeo.com/114175594.
II :: Big Data Meets Code/Space
Mon. 2/8 Readings:
☐ boyd, danah, and Kate Crawford. 2012. “Critical Questions for Big Data.” Information, Communication & Society 15 (5): 662–79.
☐ Corsín Jiménez, Alberto. 2014. “The Right to Infrastructure: A Prototype for Open Source Urbanism.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32 (2): 342–62.
Wed. 2/10 Readings:
☐ Gieseking, Jen Jack. 2016 (forthcoming). “Size Matters to Lesbians Too: Queer Feminist Inerventions into the Scale of Big Data.” Professional Geographer.
☐ McGlotten, Shaka. 2016 (forthcoming). “Black Data.” In No Tea, No Shade: New Queer of Color Critique, ed. E.P. Johnson. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mon. 2/15 Readings:
☐ Graham, Stephen D. N. 2005. “Software-Sorted Geographies.” In The People, Place and Space Reader, eds. Gieseking, Mangold, Katz, Low, Saegert, 133-138. New York: Routledge.
☐ Kitchin, Rob, and Martin Dodge. 2014. “Introducing Code/Space.” In Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, 3–22. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
☐ Ashcoff, Nicole M. 2015. “The Smartphone Society.” Jacobin. March.
Wed. 2/17 Lab & Readings :: Graphing
☐ Yau, Nathan. 2013. “Understanding Data.” In Data Points: Visualization That Means Something, 1–42. Hoboken: Wiley.
☐ Gieseking, Jen Jack. 2013. “Opaque Is Being Polite: On Algorithms, Violence, & Awesomeness in Data Visualization.” jgieseking.org. October 13.
☐ < ONLINE > Rosling, Hans. 2015. The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen. Accessed Nov. 14. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.
III :: Privacy & Surveillance
Wed. 2/24 Readings:
☐ Cheney-Lippold, John. 2011. “A New Algorithmic Identity: Soft Biopolitics and the Modulation of Control.” Theory, Culture & Society 28 (6): 164–81.
☐ Gehl, Robert W. 2014. “Power/Freedom on the Dark Web: A Digital Ethnography of the Dark Web Social Network.” New Media & Society, October, 1–17.
Mon. 2/29 Readings:
☐ Community Informatics Community. 2013. “An Internet for the Common Good: Engagement, Empowerment, & Justice for All.” Journal of Community Informatics 9 (4).
☐ Boyle, James. 1997. “A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?” Duke Law Journal 47: 87–116.
☐ B., Joshua. 2014. “10 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Terms and Conditions.’” The Richest. August 15.
Wed. 3/2 Lab & Readings :: Mapping
☐ Tufte, Edward R. 2011. “Visual & Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions.” In Envisioning Information, 27–54. Cheshire, CT.: Graphics Press.
☐ Yau, Nathan. 2013. “Representing Data.” In Data Points, 91–134. Hoboken: Wiley.
IV :: Design
Mon. 3/7 Readings:
☐ Berners-Lee, Tim, Robert Calliau, Ari Loutonen, Henrik Frystk Nielsen, and Arthur Secret. 1994. “The World Wide Web.” Communications of the ACM 37 (8): 76–82.
☐ < ONLINE > Johnson, Steven A. 1997. “Bitmapping: An introduction.” In Interface culture: How new technology transforms the way we create and communicate. HarperOne. 11-41. http://www.units.miamioh.edu/technologyandhumanities/johnson.htm.
☐ World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 2015. “HTML & CSS Guide.” W3C.
☐ World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 2015. “Accessibility Guide.” W3C.
☐ < ONLINE > Code Studio. 2014. “Code with Anna and Elsa.” Code.org. https://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1.
Wed. 3/9 Readings:
☐ Pariser, Eli. 2012. “Introduction.” In The Filter Bubble: How the Web Is Changing What We Read & How We Think, 1–20. New York: Penguin.
☐ Nakamura, Lisa. 2011. “Race and Identity in Digital Media.” In Mass Media and Society, ed. James Curran, 5th ed., 336–47. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
☐ Lingel, Jessa, and Tarleton Gillespie. 2014. “One Name to Rule Them All: Facebook’s Identity Problem.” The Atlantic, October 2.
☐ Gillespie, Tarleton. 2012. “Can an Algorithm Be Wrong?” Limn (2).
Mon. 3/14 – Fr. 3/20 Spring Break: No Classes, No Readings, No Labs
Mon. 3/21 Mid-Term Exam
Wed. 3/23 Lab :: Social Network Analysis
☐ Hu, Tung-Hui. 2015. “The Shape of the Network.” A Prehistory of the Cloud. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 1-36.
☐ Yau, Nathan. 2013. “Exploring Data Visually.” In Data Points, 135–153. Hoboken: Wiley.
V :: Cyborgs
Mon. 3/28 & Wed. 3/30 [Prof. Gieseking is away – readings for 4/4 but no class]
Mon. 4/4 Readings:
☐ Fawcett, John. 2013. Episodes 1 – 10. Orphan Black: Season 1. TV Show. UK: BBC Home Entertainment.
☐ Stone, Allucquére Rosanne. 1991. “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?” In Cyberspace: First Steps, 81–118. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
☐ Daniels, Jessie. 2009. “Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 37 (1): 101–24.
Wed. 4/6 Readings:
☐ Mitchell, Katharyne, Sallie A. Marston, and Cindi Katz. 2003. “Introduction: Life’s Work: An Introduction, Review and Critique.” Antipode 35 (3): 415–42.
☐ Gray, Mary L. 2007. “From Websites to Wal-Mart: Youth, Identity Work, and the Queering of Boundary Publics in Small Town, USA.” American Studies 48 (2): 49–59.
Mon. 4/11 Readings:
☐ Donovan, Gregory, and Cindi Katz. 2009. “Cookie Monsters: Seeing Young People’s Hacking as Creative Practice.” Children, Youth and Environments 19 (1): 197–222.
☐ Wortham, Jenna. 2012. “Homeless as Wi-Fi Transmitters Creates a Stir in Austin.” The New York Times, March 12.
Wed. 4/13 Lab :: Text Analysis
☐ Aiden, Erez, and Jean-Baptiste Michel. 2013. “Through the Looking Glass.” In Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture, 1–25. New York: Riverhead Books.
☐ Bail, Christopher A. 2014. “The Cultural Environment: Measuring Culture with Big Data.” Theory and Society 43 (3-4): 465–82.
VI :: Networked
Mon. 4/18 Readings:
☐ Hu, Tung-Hui. 2015. “Introduction.” A Prehistory of the Cloud. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. ix-xxix.
☐ Greengard, Samuel. 2015. “The Industrial Internet Emerges.” The Internet of Things. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 51-78.
Wed. 4/20 Readings:
☐ Hu, Tung-Hui. 2015. “Data Centers and Data Bunkers.” A Prehistory of the Cloud. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 79-110.
☐ Schuurman, Nadine. 2012. “Databases and Bodies: A Cyborg Update.” Environment and Planning A 36(8): 1337–40.
☐ Yu, Charles. 2010. “Standard Loneliness Package.” Lightspeed Magazine, November. http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/standard-loneliness-package/.
Mon. 4/25 Readings:
☐ Coleman, Gabriella. 2012. “Am I Anonymous?” Limn (2).
☐ < ONLINE > Miller, Greg. 2013. “Here’s How Memes Went Viral — In the 1800s.” Wired Science: MapLab. November 4. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/data-mining-viral-texts-1800s/.
☐ Brunton, Finn, and Helen Nissenbaum. 2015. “Political & Ethical Perspectives on Data Obfuscation.” In Privacy, Due Process and the Computational Turn, eds. Hildebrandt and Vries, 164–88. New York: Routledge.
Wed. 4/27 Lab :: Graphing the Second Dataset
☐ Yau, Nathan. 2013. “Exploring Data Visually.” In Data Points, 176–200. Hoboken: Wiley.
☐ Yau, Nathan. 2013. “Visualizing with Clarity.” In Data Points, 201–220. Hoboken: Wiley.
** :: CODA
Mon. 5/2 In-class lab & presentation prep-time
Wed. 5/4 In-class presentations