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), 298-304.
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. 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 11. 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 13. Midterm exam.

Spring Break

March 25. 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 Iyengarand Donald R. Kinder, News that Matters: Television and American Opinion (University of Chicago Press, 1987), 1-72, 98-133.

March 27. 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 1. 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 3. Advertising

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

April 8. 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 10. Computer-mediated communication

Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler, Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization (MIT Press, 1991), 57-157.
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Harvard Business School Press, 2000), 11-62 (Chs. 1-2).

April 15. Culture, personal identity, and computer networks

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

April 17. The future of the Internet (and of freedom, privacy, and a few other things)

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

April 20. 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,"
Correspondence: An International Review of Culture and Society Summer-Fall 2001 (Special Issue on Globalization and Cinema), 3-4, 6-8, 11-14.

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

April 24. Debate: Requirements for Internet filtering and blocking software in schools. and libraries

April 29. Debate: the role of government in the development of broadband.

Note: the class may decide to substitute other issues for debate.

May 1.The new media and the future of democracy

Norris, Digital Divide, Parts II and III.