Communications,
Culture, and Society

Where to find the readings:

= Firestone Reserve. = Electronic Reserve or World Wide Web (hyperlink).
= University Store = Pequod packet

February 4. An introduction to the terrain

February 6-11. Alternative approaches to studying the effects of communication

Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (Glencoe, Il: Free Press, 1955), 15-25, 31-33.
Todd Gitlin, "Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm, " Theory and Society 6 (1978), 205-24.
James W. Carey, "A Cultural Approach to Communication, " in James W. Carey, Communication as Culture (Unwin Hyman, 1989), 13-36.

February 11-13. The classical problem in a current form: the media and civic engagement

Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 15-28, 216-46.
Pippa Norris, A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3-21, 279-306.

February 18. The architecture of communications: the case of the Internet

Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 3-60.

February 20-25. Literacy and reading

Jack Goody and Ian P. Watt, "The Consequences of Literacy, " Comparative Studies in History and Society 5 (1963), 304-45.
Carl F. Kaestle, "Studying the History of Literacy," and "The History of Readers" in Carl F. Kaestle et al., Literacy in the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 3-72.
Dana Nelson Salvino, "The Word in Black and White: Ideologies of Race and Literacy in Antebellum America," in Cathy N. Davidson, ed., Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 140-156.

February 25-27. The public sphere and the press

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 298-309.
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT, 1991), 14-31.
Stephen Botein, “Printers and the American Revolution,” in Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., The Press & the American Revolution (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1980), 11-57.

March 4. Communications, nationalism, and minority cultures

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed (London: Verso, 1991), 67-82.
Stephen Harold Riggins, "The Media Imperative: Ethnic Minority Survival in the Age of Mass Communications," in Riggins ed. Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1992), 1-20.

March 6-11. The development of communication networks

Richard R. John, “Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age,” in Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and James W. Cortada, eds., A Nation Transformed by Information (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 55-105.
Claude S. Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 92-106.

March 13. Midterm exam.

Spring Break

March 25. The rise (and persistence) of radio

Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), Introduction, Ch. 1, Chs. 6-9.
Rebecca Piirto, "Why Radio Thrives, "American Demographics (May 1994), 40-46.

March 27-April 1. Uses and effects of television

Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 1992), 1-10, 26-35
Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder, News that Matters: Television and American Opinion (University of Chicago Press, 1987), 1-72, 98-133.

April 3. The information revolution and the breakup of the mass audience

W. Russell Neuman, The Future of the Mass Audience (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1-14, 22-78, 145-63.
Pippa Norris, A Virtuous Circle, 90-119.

April 8. Shaping the news

Michael Schudson, Discovering the News (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 88-120.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, The Interplay of Influence: News, Advertising Politics, and the Mass Media, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2000), 83-155 [Chs. 3-4: "News as Persuasion"; "Influencing the News Media"].

April 8. Advertising

Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, The Interplay of Influence, 216-276 [Chs. 7-8: "Persuasion Through Advertising"; "Influencing Advertisers"].

April 10. The digital divide

Pippa Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3-92 (Part I).
Paul DiMaggio, Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John P. Robinson, "Social Implications of the Internet," Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001), 307-336.

April 15. Computer-mediated communication

Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler, Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization (MIT Press, 1991), 79-123.
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Harvard Business School Press, 2000), 11-62 (Chs. 1-2).

April 17. Culture, personal identity, and computer networks

Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen (Simon & Schuster, 1995), Introduction, Chs. 1-5, 9-10.

April 22. The future of the Internet (and of freedom, privacy, and a few other things)

Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, 63-108, 142-85
Jeff Chester and Gary O. Larson, "End of the Open Road?" The American Prospect (January 17, 2001), 42-45.

April 24. The globalization of culture

"Globalization and Cinema," including:
Richard Pena, "The Roots of Globalization in the Cinema";
Tyler Cowen, "Why Hollywood Rules the World (and Should We Care?)";
Frederic Martel, "France's Film Subsidy System"; Christina Stojanova, "The Most Important Art";
and N. Frank Ukadike, "African Video-Films: An Alternate Reality,"
in Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society Summer-Fall 2001 (Special Issue on Globalization and Cinema; published by the Council on Foreign Relations), 3-4, 6-8, 11-14.

Geoffrey Nunnberg, "Will the Internet Always Speak English?" The American Prospect (March 27-April 10, 2000)

April 29. Debate: Requirements for Internet filtering and blocking software in schools and libraries

Background readings for the debate:
Commission on Online Child Protection, Executive Summary of "Final Report to Congress" (October 20, 2000).

Joshua Micah Marshall, "Will Free Speech Get Caught in the Web?" The American Prospect no. 36 (January-February 1998), pp. 46-50.
Geoffrey Nunberg, "The Internet Filter Farce" The American Prospect (January 1-15, 2001), pp. 24-28.

May 1. The new media and the future of democracy

Norris, Digital Divide, Parts II and III.