Week 10: October 26 & 28

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What’s Due Next?

This Week

  • Tuesday (today): Keyword Infrastructure
  • Thursday: Response post to “Infrastructure”

Near Future

  • Write Short Response Paper #2: Technology using All You Need is Kill and Edge of Tomorrow for Sunday, October 31
    • New! Add a paragraph on the cover page that explains how you used feedback provided for your first short response paper to write this paper.

What’s Coming Up?

  • Be sure you’re able to access Apple TV+ (either through free trial or paid subscription) to watch Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson: Episode 1: Auto-Tune
  • Begin thinking about how you’ll use ArcGIS StoryMap to visualize the definition of a keyword of your choice from KMS and/or our class coverage

Tuesday, October 26

Opening Discussion

    • Anything happen recently that makes you think about any of the keywords we’ve discussed or addressed in class?
    • Thanks for your mid-term feedback last week. I’ve taken some of the suggestions to heart, and I hope you see that in some of the future activities.
    • What do you think about the role Facebook is alleged to have played in the events leading up to January 6?
    • How might any of our keywords provide ways to understand how Facebook is engaged?

Infrastructure

  • What are some examples of infrastructure?
  • How does infrastructure relate to media studies? To rhetoric? To communication?

Some Characteristics of Infrastructure

  • Rendered largely invisible
  • Revealed most often in the moment of an infrastructural glitch
  • Focused on the material conditions of production and consumption
  • Often obscures forms of power not otherwise recognized
  • Public utilities in the post-industrial information age become utility publics: the prosumer (producer + consumer) becomes the capital

Edge of Tomorrow & All You Need is Kill

Consider the relationship between technology and humans in these passage from All You Need is Kill. Then work to answer this question: Does Edge of Tomorrow paint a similar picture of this relationship between human and machine? Why and how? Or why not? Try to provide evidence from specific scenes in the film.

Work together in small groups to collect your ideas, and we’ll report out after about 10 minutes.

To fight them, we use machines to make ourselves stronger. (p. 11)

They simply hunt with the relentlessness of machines. (p. 11)

I bore the burden of endless battle like the killing machine I’d become—a machine with blood and nerves in place of oil and wires. A machine doesn’t get distracted. A machine doesn’t cry. A machine wears the same bitter smile day in, day out. It reads the battle as it unfolds. Its eyes scan for the next enemy before it’s finished killing the first, and its mind is already thinking about the third. It wasn’t lucky, and it wasn’t unlucky. It just was. So I kept fighting. If this was going to go on forever, it would go on forever. (p. 79)

I was a precision fighting machine without processing cycles to span on extraneous information. Rita and anything more complicated than run/parry/dodge would have to wait. Whatever her intentions, her attacks were deadly real. (p. 150)

If I flipped the switch on, the reflexes burned into me through 160 loops would kick in, taking over my body like a robot in a factory. (p. 155)

Short Response Paper #2

Each response paper should address the following questions:

  • Why did you select the keywords you did? Why are they useful to interpreting the media?
  • How does the keyword help you better understand the media?
  • What questions does the media leave unanswered in relation to the keyword?
  • What aspects of the keyword remain unaddressed or unengaged in the media, if any?
  • If you don’t apply this keyword, how might your interpretation of this media differ?

Assignment

  • Read All You Need is Kill, then watch Edge of Tomorrow (it’s important to do this in order)
  • Use at least two keywords as a critical lens in a response to the film (but feel free to use the text to help you talk about the film): Choose from technology, data, network, infrastructure, and agency; or select other keywords related to identity from KMS.
  • Write your response and submit it as a Word or PDF document via the Blackboard assignment entry.
  • New: Include on your cover page a paragraph in which you explain how feedback on Paper #1 helped you improve this paper.

Thursday, October 28

ArcGIS StoryMaps Presentation

  • Led by Justin Madron
  • He’ll reference this page during class: Storytelling Tips
  • You’ll also see the Nine Tips to Great Storytelling story embedded below.


Notes

  • ArcGIS StoryMaps emerged from Esri, focused on digital storytelling (not as much about maps, which is the focus of Esri)
    • StoryMaps login
    • Click Sign In
    • Click “Your ArcGIS organization’s URL” > netID and password
  • Lots that can be done with ArcGIS StoryMaps, especially related to portfolios and career preparation, documenting trips
  • StoryMaps are linear, although there are allowances to explore and divert (helpful when we define something)
  • Not a media dump: telling a narrative
  • Can be used for lots of different purposes and approaches
  • Key approaches
    • Identify your target audience (not “everyone everywhere”)
      • How much knowledge will you target audience bring to the story?
      • How can you make your story relatable to your target audience?
    • Define 2-3 key takeaways (i.e., do some planning); simplicity is key
    • Define your goals and metrics for success (clicks, engagement, learning)
    • Create content inventory list (media heavy; get your media together, and switch up your media a little)
    • Draft an outline or “storyboard” your project – check for flow, story or logic gaps, linearity
    • Hook your audience at the very beginning: graphic, image, statement — like an abstract in a research project
  • Keep the audience in the StoryMap (use external links sparingly)
  • Good use of slideshow is to pause the narrative and dive into a specific aspect or segment of the story
  • Keep maps to a minimum unless maps are the focus of the project or assignment

Sample Outline

  • Audience: Dean’s Office
  • Purpose: Fund a class trip to Italy
  • Key takeaways
    • Explore new culture
    • Impact on studies at UR
    • Financial/funding requirements
    • Italian outreach and partnership
  • Key Graphics
    • Pictures of specific destinations and activities in Italy
    • Statistics showing the impact of trips abroad
    • Pictures of other students who’ve studied abroad before
    • Map of location

Some Options

  • Cover design
  • Navigation bar (yes/no)
  • To add stuff, click the “plus” sign
  • If you add a heading, it will automatically get added to the nav (if selected)

APA In-Text and References Citation Format

  • Use the Purdue OWL’s APA Reference pages for assistance
  • Apply for references used in your Short Response Paper #2

References Examples (don’t forget hanging indentation):

Levina, M. (2017). Network. In L. Ouellette & J. Gray (Eds.), Keywords for media studies (pp. 127–129). NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gk08zz.44

Liman, D. (Director). (2014). Edge of tomorrow [Film]. Warner Bros.

Sakurazaka, H. (2011). All you need is kill. (J. Reeder & A. O. Smith, trans.). Haikasoru/VIZ Media.

In-text Citation Examples:

  • According to Levina (2017), “some quoted materials” (p. 128). «« preferred
  • And then there’s this summary of the chapter (Levina, 2017)
  • Or there’s paraphrase of something from a specific page (Levina, 2017, p. 128).

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