Technology and Culture

Instructions
For your term paper, you may choose one of the suggested topics below.
Your term paper should integrate the themes and concepts from the course. It must refer to course materials and course readings, but you are also expected to do further research. Use relevant journal articles and books in making your critical analysis. Make use of at least 3 to 4 course readings, and 2 to 3 external sources (that is, critical, peer-reviewed academic articles or books). You may also use other sources such as websites, news and current-affairs sources, blogs, and so on.
A good starting point for this assignment is a review of the works listed in the bibliographies of the assigned readings for this course. As well, the bibliographies at the end of each unit may prove useful in your task.
Include a works cited, references, or bibliography page at the end of your essay. Throughout your essay, use a standard citation style such as APA, MLA, or Chicago consistently and correctly. For information on citing, see AU’s Library Guide to Citation Style and Purdue OWL’s Research and Citation Resources .
Suggested Topics

1. Critics have argued that information in industrial societies is used principally for purposes of control, both technological and social. Explain, with reference to writers on information technology, providing examples and illustrations both from your research and your own observation.
2. Examine gender or cultural differences in the use of a particular technology (for example, women and the telephone, or youth and social media). How do your findings accord with theories of diffusion of technology?
3. Social historians claim that the newspaper was one of the great democratizing forces of the nineteenth century. What was the relationship between newspaper publishing and mass literacy in that context? Examine the role(s) played by the newspaper today. What has remained the same, and what has changed in the contemporary technological context?
4. Movies and movie palaces of the early twentieth century profoundly affected such things as class boundaries, concepts of art and authenticity, storytelling, and notions of consumerism. What effect have changes to technologies of film-making and the sociology of film consumption made to the role of the movie in contemporary culture?
5. Can Neil Postman be right? Postman’s ideas gained new prominence among commentators of the 2016 and 2020 American presidential elections. Are we amusing ourselves to death? What evidence do you find in current events or popular culture?
6. Indigenous peoples have adopted social media platforms to great effect in their communities. Explore ways in which a selected community or communities have used social media and how it has been effective in a variety of ways. What forms of older media and traditional knowledge have been remediated by social media?
   Unit 4 Reading
   o Collette Snowden and Kerry Green, “Media Reporting, Mobility and Trauma”
   o Robert MacDougall, “The Wire Devils: Pulp Thrillers, the Telephone, and Action at a Distance in the Wiring of a Nation”
   o Harmeet Sawhney, “Wi-Fi Networks and the Rerun of the Cycle”
   o George H. Buck, “The First Wave: The Beginnings of Radio in Canadian Distance Education”
   o Hazel Lacohée, Nina Wakeford, and Ian Pearson, “A Social History of the Mobile Telephone with a View of Its Future”
   o Sirpa Tenhunen, “Mobile Technology in the Village: ICTs, Culture and Social Logistics in India”
   Unit 5 Reading
   o Rosalynd Williams, “Dream Worlds of Consumption”
   o Robert Fulford, selection from This Was Expo
   o Pamela Klaffke, “Consumers and Consumerism”
   o Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave”
   o Early Cinema, Timeline
   Unit 6 Reading
   Readings
   o Shearon Lowery and Melvin L. DeFleur, “The Invasion from Mars: Radio Panics America”
   o Mary Vipond, “British or American?: Canada’s ‘Mixed’ Broadcasting System in the 1930s”
   o Lawrence Soley, “Radio: Clandestine Broadcasting, 1948–1967”
   o Tanya Bosch, “Radio as an Instrument of Protest: The History of Bush Radio”
   Broadcast
   o War of the Worlds, starring Orson Welles
   Supplementary Resources
   o David Cayley, “The Radio League”
   o Robert J. Gwyn, “Rural Radio in Bolivia: A Case Study”
   Unit 7 Reading
   o Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch, “Television as a Cultural Forum: Implications for Research”
   o Camille Paglia, “SHE WANTS HER TV! HE WANTS HIS BOOK!: A (Mostly) Polite Conversation About Our Image Culture”
   o Richard Gruneau, “Introduction: Why TVTV?”
   o Moses Znaimer, “TVTV Talks Back: A Rebuttal”
   o Corinne Squire, “Empowering Women? The Oprah Winfrey Show”
   o Bill Nichols, Excerpt from “At the Limits of Reality (TV)”
   o Daniel Boorstin, “From News Gathering to News Making: A Flood of Pseudo-Events”
   Unit 8 Reading
   Reading
   o Michel Foucault, “Panopticism”
   o Tom Brignall III, “The New Panopticon: The Internet Viewed as a Structure of Social Control”
   o Alberto Manguel, “The Library as Shadow”
   o Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis”
   Viewing
   o McLuhan’s Wake, directed by Kevin McMahon, and David Sobelman
   Unit 9 Reading
   o Lev Manovich, “How Media Became New.”
   o Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, “The World Wide Web.”
   o Alice E. Marwick, “A Cultural History of Web 2.0.”
   o Tom Standage, “Social Media Retweets History.”
   o Jennifer Tupper, “Social Media and the Idle No More Movement: Citizenship, Activism and Dissent in Canada.”