What’s Due Next?
This Week
- Tuesday (today)
- Keyword Surveillance
- Response post to “Gaze” (this is a change from our normal pattern)
- Thursday, December 2:
- “Gaze” reply comments
- Response post to “Surveillance” (no reply comments for “Surveillance” required)
Near Future
- Short Response Paper #3: Convergence is due Friday, December 3 (this is a change)
- Your Final Project, the ArcGIS StoryMap illustration of a keyword, remains due on Tuesday, December 7, but you have an automatic extension until December 14 if needed.
Tuesday, November 30
Two Closing Arguments
- “Gaze” and “Surveillance” in media studies both represent viewing of different objects by different subjects for different purposes
- Gaze
- Objects are generally marginalized in culture and society (e.g., women, BIPOC [black, indigenous, and people of color]) who lack subjective agency.
- Subjects are generally mainstream, white, and heterosexual in culture and society who have subjective agency
- Purpose of the Gaze is to sexualize, genderize, make available and touch objects of desire
- Not generally overtly about power relations, but clearly interwoven with them
- Surveillance
- Objects are generally those who need to be controlled or disciplined in some way
- Subjects are generally nation states and multinational corporations
- Purpose of Surveillance is to control and manage presumed inevitable future dangers
- Overtly dictates power relations
- Gaze
- Gaze and Surveillance belong with Agency, Assemblage, and Flow as components or aspect of Convergence
- Convergence represents the tendency toward merger and assimilation, subsuming individual perspectives and approaches under over-arching paradigmatic umbrellas
- Gaze and Surveillance both proliferate in media and seek to expand power and influence over “the other”
- Consider corporate convergence in the example of Facebook, Meta, and the Metaverse
- Facebook acquires Instagram
- Facebook acquires WhatsApp
- Facebook renames itself “Meta” and shifts focus to the metaverse, a virtual world in which data represents (or perhaps is) identity
- Gaze and Surveillance become corporate values in the guise of data collection, data analytics, and marketing and advertising revenue
- Gaze and Surveillance are enabled by Assemblage and Flow, and result in the lost of individual agency in the form of assemblage agency: assembled in the metaverse, owned by Meta
Thinking about StoryMaps
Details of the Assignment
- Select a keyword (can be one we covered or any other keyword in KMS)
- Illustrate that keyword as an ArcGIS StoryMap
- Embed your StoryMap in a paragraph-length project summary blog post in category “StoryMap”
Reminders about StoryMaps
- Review notes from Justin Madron’s presentation (see class notes from October 28) on how to plan and outline your StoryMap, along with the Storytelling Tips he shared.
- Review Justin’s 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
- Identify your target audience (not “everyone everywhere”)
- You are free to play, but you need to give yourself time to fail before your succeed in communicating your ideas.
- You don’t need to provide an in-depth definition of your keyword, but you’re encouraged to use a definition as an introduction along with some way to illustrate the keyword.
- You’re welcome to use research to dig into deeper meanings of the keyword, which may be useful if you seek to illustrate the history of the keyword’s emergence in critical studies.
- You’re also welcome to focus more directly on creative aspects of illustrating the keyword’s use as a critical lens.
Grading
200 points total (20% of final grade)
- 75 points: Identify and fully build out a StoryMap of the selected keyword (i.e., the StoryMap is about the keyword, not about something else, and you clearly understand the keyword)
- 75 points: Accurately depict the StoryMap of the keyword without errors or misinterpretation (i.e., the illustrations are applicable to the keyword, and you’ve not used the keyword inaccurately as a critical lens)
- 25 points: Provides depth and breadth of creativity, integrating multiple complete media types (i.e., you’ve integrated creativity in the StoryMap, and it’s not just one or two rows in length)
- 25 points: Takes full advantage of StoryMap medium, demonstrating technological and information literacy (i.e., you’ve demonstrated understanding of StoryMaps by creating a good one)
Thursday, December 2
Closing Discussion
- What do you believe you’ve learned about this semester in this course?
- Do you see ways that what you’ve learned will help you in future classes?
- What did you learn about using the blog as a tool for reflection and response?
- How does the blog as a technology affect the learning experience?
- How does working in the blog compare to class discussions and using Blackboard for discussion?
- What worked well this semester?
- Where is there room for improvement?
Final Requests
- Please complete the official course evaluation form. This is important for lots of reasons, but for me it’s a method for identifying areas of strength and weakness in the course.
- I won’t see results until after I’ve submitted grades.
- Your responses will be anonymous.
- Please consider taking a couple of minutes during class to complete a feedback form that identifies strengths and areas of improvements in the course.
- I’ll see these results immediately.
- Your responses will be anonymous.
Grades
I’ll announce final calculated grades in Blackboard before I submit them to BannerWeb. You’ll have a short window to ask questions about your final grade, but you can work with your advisor to appeal grades if that’s something you wish to do. I don’t mind questions about grades.
Final grades are due Friday morning, December 19.