Sociology of Cyberspace Syllabus
Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2012
Cyberspace-Cybersociology
Social,
Legal, and Ethical Issues of the Internet - Syllabus - Suzie Weisband -
Arizona
Specialization
Course in Web Sociology and Social Informatics
Erasmus/Socrates Interuniversity Co-operation Programme Syllabus
Sociology and Cyberspace Syllabus
- Department of Sociology and Social Work, Bradley University -
lydia.bradley.edu/las/soc/syl/391/
The Sociology of Cyberspace
is a collaborative project with coordinating professors from a variety of disciplines
including sociology, physics, philosophy, business, art, English, women's studies,
and computer science.
The Sociology of Cyberspace
examines the contemporary revolution in human interaction via computer. Using both
postmodern and traditional media theory, we will discuss the social construction of
the virtual world and new virtual communities with emphasis on the new culture,
institutions and norms in the experience of cyberspace.
Topics include: new concepts of
space, time, and order; electronic subjectivity and anonymity; new representation of
gender, race and class; emergence of new languages of expression; and the
revolutionary impact of hypertext and multimedia technologies on human thinking and
learning.
The Sociology of
Cyberspace - Professor Peter Kollock, Department of Sociology, UCLA
www.sscnet.ucla.edu/ soc/faculty/kollock/classes/cyberspace/
Topics include frames of interaction, identity and anonymity, social order and deviance,
cooperation and collective action, markets, graphic worlds (2D and 3D), lessons and design
principles.
Cyberculture:
A Sociological Analysis for Educator - Professor Robert Runt, University of
Lethbridge, Canada - home.uleth.ca/ and www.edu.uleth.ca/~runte/
The topics include
1) The Limits and Possibilities of Innovative Technologies: Hype, Cynicism, and Grounded
Projection, The Contradictory Forces Of Democratization and Commodification, The
"Information Age", The Virtual Classroom, 2) Cyber Culture: Is There A Cyber
Culture?, Cyber Culture And Individual Identity, Cyber Culture And Canadian Identity,
Cyber Culture And Society.
Web Sociology and Social Informatics
Professor Ingar Roggen, The World Wide Web Virtual Laboratory
folk.uio.no/iroggen/WEBsociology.html
The objective of this course is to strengthen the basis for co-operation between the
IT-professions and the social sciences. The emphasis is on the sociological competence
needed to cope with information technology within broader organizational and societal
contexts.
The Sociology of Cyberspace - Online
Communities and Markets - UCLA
Instructor: Peter Kollock
COMMUNITIES
Communities in Cyberspace.
(Kollock & Smith 1999)
Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone:
Virtual Communities as Communities. (Wellman & Gulia 1999)
The Heart of the WELL
and Daily Life in Cyberspace (Rheingold 1993)
Mudding: Social Phenomena in
Text-Based Virtual Reality. (Curtis 1991)
How many list subscribers does it
take to change a lightbulb?
IDENTITY AND ANONYMITY
The Strange Case of the Electronic
Lover. (Van Gelder 1991)
Identity and Deception in the
Virtual Community. (Donath 1999)
Reading Race Online: Discovering
Racial Identity in Usenet Discussions. (Burkhalter 1999)
Writing in the Body: Gender
(Re)Production in Online Interaction. (O’Brien 1999)
SOCIAL ORDER AND DEVIANCE
A Rape in Cyberspace. (Dibbell
1993)
Approaches to Managing Deviant
Behavior in Virtual Communities. (Bruckman et al. 1994)
Hierarchy and Power: Social Control
in Cyberspace. (Reid 1999)
Problems of Conflict Management in
Virtual Communities. (Smith 1999)
LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction
(1996)
COOPERATION AND COLLECTIVE ACTION
Managing the Virtual Commons:
Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities. (Kollock & Smith 1996)
The Economies of Online Cooperation:
Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. (Kollock 1999)
The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
(Raymond 1997/2000)
Cyberspace and Disadvantaged
Communities: The Internet as a Tool for Collective Action. (Mele 1999)
Social Dilemmas: The Anatomy of
Cooperation. (Kollock 1998)
The Effect of Communication Modality
on Cooperation in Online Environments. (Jensen et al. 2000)
MARKETS AND REPUTATIONS
The Production of Trust in Online
Markets. (Kollock 1999)
Reputation Systems. (Resnick
et al. 2000)
Revenge of the Know-It-Alls.
(Frauenfelder 2000)
Reputations Research Network
Trust Among Strangers in Internet
Transactions: Empirical Analysis of eBay's Reputation System. (Resnick &
Zeckhauser 2002)
MUD Money: A Talk on Virtual
Value and, Incidentally, the Value of the Virtual. (Dibbell 1995)
GRAPHICAL WORLDS: Lessons from History
The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s
Habitat. (Morningstar & Farmer 1991)
Habitat Anecdotes. (Farmer
1988)
Oracle Layza’s Tales from
Fujitsu Habitat. (Farmer 1990)
Metaworlds. (Rossney 1996)
Life at the Palace. (Suler
1996) “History of the First Year”; “Subtlety in Multimedia
Chat”; skim rest
Comic Chat. (Kurlander, Skelly
& Salesin 1996)
The Social Life of Small Graphical
Chats. (Smith, Farnham, & Drucker 2000)
GRAPHICAL WORLDS
Killers Have More Fun. (Kim
1998)
Kill Bunnies, Sell Meat, Kill More
Bunnies. (Lizard 1998)
The Unreal Estate Boom
(Dibbell 2003)
Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account
of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier. (Castronova 2001)
On Virtual Economies.
(Castronova 2002)
LESSONS AND DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Online Community Building
Concepts. (Williams 1994)
Nine Principles for Making Virtual
Communities Work. (Godwin 1994)
Making Virtual Communities
Work. (Suler 1996)
Design Principles for Online
Communities. (Kollock 1996)
Secrets of Successful Web
Communities: 9 Timeless Design Principles for Community Building. (Kim 1998)
The Art of Hosting Good
Conversations Online. (Rheingold 1998)
The WELL Host Manual (1996)
Cyberspace Innkeeping. (Coate
1993)
COMS 620 Syllabus -
http://people.ku.edu/~jmonberg/cmc.htm
Syllabus - Identity and Internet -
http://web.mit.edu/ afs/athena.mit.edu/user/s/t/sturkle/www/Identity.html
Identity and the Internet -
Program in Science, Technology and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Sherry Turkle
Neal Stephenson, Snowcrash (New
York: Bantam Books, 1992).
Howard Reingold, The Virtual
Community (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publications, 1993).
Sherry Turkle Life on the Screen:
Identity in the Age of the Internet
Erik Erikson, "Eight Ages of
Man", from Childhood and Society (New York, Norton, 1950).
Cyberspace: First Steps,
Michael Benedikt (ed.) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).
Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated
Self (New York: Basic Books, 1991), "Social Saturation and the Populated
Self" and "From Self to Relationship".
James M. Glass, Shattered Selves.,
Chapter 1
Rosanne Allequere Stone,
"Violation and Virtuality", unpublished manuscript.
Lindsy Van Gelder, "The Strange
Case of the Electronic Lover"
Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg
Manifesto" from Simians, Cyborgs and Women (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Elizabeth Reid, "Virtual
Worlds: Culture and Imagination" from Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated
Communication and Community , Steven Jones (ed.) (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications,
1995).
Chip Morningstar and F. Randall
Farmer, "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat" from Cyberspace: First Steps, Michael
Benedikt (ed.) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).
The Virtual Community:
Homesteading on the Electronic Fronteir (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publications,
1993).
Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, from The
Identities of Persons, "Introduction" and "A Literary Postscript"
Sydney Shoemaker, "Embodiment
and Behavior"
Daniel Dennett, "Conditions of
Personhood"
Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good
Place (New York: Paragon House, 1989), Chapters 1-3
Brenda Damet, "'Smoking Dope'
at a Virtual Party: Writing, Play and Performance on Internet Relay Chat" from Network
and Netplay: Virtual Groups on the Internet" , Sheizaf Rafaeli, et.al. (eds.)
(Cambridge: MIT Press, in press).
Claudia Springer, "The Pleasure
of the Interface"
Douglas Kellner, "Popular
Culture and the Construction of Postmodern Identities"
Frederic Jameson,
"Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
Jean Baudrillard, from Simulations ,
"The Procession of Simulacra"
Mark Poster, from The Mode of
Information, "Derrida and Electronic Writing"
Scott Bukatman, from Terminal
Identity, "Terminal Penetration"
William Gibson, Neuromancer or Neal
Stephenson, Snowcrash
Michael Heim, "The Erotic
Ontology of Cyberspace"
David Porush, "Hacking the
Brainstem: Postmodern Metaphysics and Stephenson’s Snowcrash "
Susan Sontag, from On Photography,
"In Plato's Cave"
Michelle Kendrick, "Cyberspace
and the Technological Real"
Terri Palmer, "Under, Over, and
Around the Net: Interrupting the Utopian Subject of the Internet"
Social,
Legal, and Ethical Issues of the Internet
Professor: Suzie Weisband - Arizona
uainfo.arizona.edu/~weisband/411_511/411_s04syl.html
TEXTS AND READINGS
Baase, Sara (2003). A Gift of Fire (2nd edition). Prentice Hall.
Knowledge of Blackboard and a commitment to use it.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Computers are now so prevalent in our society that their importance hardly needs
mentioning. But we know from our experience with other technologies that adoption of a new
technology often results in effects we didn't anticipate. This course highlights numerous
questions that computerization raises as the Internet expands into virtually every corner
of everyday life. When does computerization really improve the productivity of
organizations? What risks are involved? Is computerization reducing personal privacy? What
possibilities do telecommuting really offer people for working at home? Do electronic mail
and computerized conferences promote the formation of new "communities,'' or do they
undermine intimate interaction? How do we control and manage electronic communication that
is pornographic? Why are free speech and censorship issues so much more complex when we
move to computer networks? What is "ownership" on the Net and what are the
implications for protecting intellectual property?
These and other issues are relevant to being a responsible computer user (professional or
personal) and member of the public
who could serve on a jury, debate social and political issues with friends, or influence
legislation. This is an extremely fast-changing field.
Specialization
Course in Web Sociology and Social Informatics
Erasmus/Socrates Interuniversity Co-operation Programme
Graduate Level - 15 ECTS Credits
Objective, emphasis and IT-setting for the course
The objective of this course is to strengthen the basis for co-operation between the
IT-professions and the social sciences.
The emphasis is on the sociological competence needed to cope with information technology
within broader organizational and societal contexts.
The IT-setting for the course is a network of hybrid computers operating as well on the
Apple-MacIntosh as the DOS/Windows platform.
Definition of the field of Web Sociology and Social Informatics
Information technology has traditionally been conceived as a special concern for the
natural and logico-mathematical sciences.
Social informatics (1) opposes this point of view.
Social informatics is a modern study of information technology from the point of view of
the social and cultural sciences, where Web sociology (2) is a special domain.
The course adapts a holistic perspective on social informatics and Web sociology on the
premises of Gestalt philosophy, Gestalt psychology and Gestalt logic.
From the point of view of Gestalt theory, the frontiers between the cultural, social and
natural sciences are open and permit the crossing of professional barriers.
Outline of the lectures
The term "the Web" is used here in an intuitive way to denote what people in
general mean when they talk about "the Internet", "the World Wide Web"
etc.
When so freely interpreted, "the Web" may even name the emergent global
data/media/network-society as a whole.
The value of this approach is that it permits studies of the Web as a social phenomenon
and as a social reality without getting lost in technicalities.
There is a famous theorem formulated by W. I. Thomas:
If men define situations as real they are real in their consequences. (3)
Since most people in modern societies seem to conceive the Web as real, it can be expected
to have real consequences, according to Thomas's theorem.
Web sociological research centers on these conceptions of reality and their consequences.
The lectures cover (I) the scientific perspective of Web sociology and social informatics,
(II) the historical development of information technology and information society and
(III) actual research directions and possibilities in this field.
(I) The first part covers theories, models and methods for studies of the Web.
(II) The second part treats the great transition from a traditional capitalist mode of
production to a new "informatic mode of production". It discusses the new,
information-technological basis for social power - model power and model monopoly.
Attention is directed toward new, computer-based mechanisms of social control. This part
also covers the fronts between the humanist, the hacker and the professional infocrat.
Other themes that are treated are the challenge to human creativity from the
data/media/network-technology and a new form of social integration - electronic
solidarity.
(III) The third part asks if information society can be studied and explained with
theories and methods that are developed within industrial society and that therefore build
upon data from an earlier stage of societal development. Questions of cross-scientific
research between social sciences and informatics are discussed. The course closes with a
tentative overview over the situation in this field of research at the end of the course.
The
Information Society: Cyber Dreams and Digital Nightmares by Robert Hassan
Cybercrime:
The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age (Crime and Society) by David
S. Wall
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