Final Project
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DUE MAY 12, 2015
Class on May 12 will consist of Extra Credit presentations and a final wrap-up.
Description
The final project is a 3000-3500 word (about 12-14 pages, double spaced) research paper, built around taking the theoretical concepts about Internet control brought forward in the course and applying them to a particular online community. The final paper is a mix of observational and normative analysis, and requires students to do the following:
- Identify a particular online community – The community you select should be a social space, where members of the public interact online. It can be a particular website, a cluster of websites, or an online platform. It should not be so large as to encompass an entire population of users or the Internet as a whole, nor should it be so small a community that there’s no meaningful activity happening on at least a weekly basis.
- Identify a challenge the community is trying to address – All online communities are trying to achieve some ends, and face some obstacles to achieving those ends. A social media website may want to encourage social communication, but be concerned about privacy; a customer review website may want to encourage fair reviews of restaurants, but be concerned about information quality and falsehoods; a media hosting website may want to encourage good content, but be concerned about intellectual property and piracy; an online game may want to help users have fun, but be concerned about bullying or trolling. Think of a substantive issue that the community you have selected faces. It should be a substantial issue; the rest of the paper will be oriented around the issue you pick.
- Describe how different players regulate the community around this issue – Describe the different forces that govern the community around the issue you have selected, how those forces govern behavior, and what values they represent. This should lead with forces that are unique to this community or most relevant to the challenge you identified. For example, national law or high-level policy need only be discussed if it has a greater-than-average role to play in the particular community. We expect to see citations and references to the readings from the semester semester about observing online behavior and understanding forces of online control.
- Observe how this control (or lack thereof) helps regulate and shape the community around this issue, both positively and negatively – Using the readings from the semester and related research, analyze how different control decisions may shape the development of the community around the issue you have selected. As we’ll see in this semester’s readings, decisions on where and how to exercise control can have both positive and negative consequences, and can limit the ability of certain benefits that may flow from ungoverned spaces. Your analysis should cite the relevant readings from the class, and any observations or generalizations about the community should be supported with evidence where possible.
Remember that this is a course focused on the consequences of regulatory actions, and how different control choices open or close different opportunities on the Internet. Think in particular about any unintended consequences of using certain mechanisms of control, and whether alternatives means could be used to achieve the same result without similar consequences. Do you think the community strikes the right balance? What changes could they make to improve their handling of the issue you identified? Could some future event change their thinking around how the community is controlled? You may also compare your community with a similarly-sized community trying to do similar things, to see how other communities approach the same problem.
In lieu of submitting a paper, you may present your finding using a different medium, such as a podcast, video, or web page. If you do submit a paper, your paper should be 3000-3500 words, presented in a legible manner. (Most students submit 12-14 pages, double spaced, using a 12- point serif font, e.g. Times New Roman, Cambria, Palatino, etc.) If you submit through another medium, we shall expect a depth and level of analysis equivalent to that of an 12-14 page paper.
You may work in groups as long as you let us know by March 24th.
Format
Your paper should be legibly presented and be no more than 3000 words. What works best for us is a paper 8-10 pages long, double spaced, using a serif font (Times New Roman, Cambria, Palatino, etc.). Please upload your paper as a .doc, a .odt, or a .pdf.
You may use any commonly accepted style to cite your sources (Chicago, MLA, Bluebook, etc.), but please be consistent.
Submissions
Please include your final project here, including wiki or real name(s) and title: Final Projects
Submit the final project on or before May 12th.
Frequently Asked Questions
This section will aggregate some common questions that come up in the course of the project, drawn from emails with students.
Q1: How big or active should the online community be?
A1: The community should be active enough that there's on ongoing stream of activity to observe on the site - any community that has updates daily or at least a few times a week should work, provided it meets the other criteria of the project. Very large communities – Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, etc. – are simply too big to study behavior with any rigor. Some students have found success by honing in on a particular sub-community that presents the challenge you want to study.