Course Syllabus

History of Information, 2017

INFO 103

Note: Required readings not reached by links from this page will be in the course reader.

 

WEEK 1

17 Jan: Introduction: Why "History of Information?"

[slides]

 

19 Jan: The "Age of Information"

Ours, it is often said, is the "age of information." In this class we will examine what that might mean and to what extent ours is the first age in history with the right to make such a claim.

There is no required reading for this class.

[slides]

 

WEEK 2

24 Jan: Technological Revolutions

In this class we will look at arguments that suggest or contest the idea that technologies (and particularly information technologies) are capable of changing the world by themselves. Such claims are common today, but as we shall see, they have a long history.

Required Reading

McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media. New York: McGraw-Hill.  
Read: "Preface to Third Printing" (pp. v-x), and "Introduction" & "The Medium is the Message" (pp. 3-21).  
Source: Course reader [bCourses]

Williams, Raymond. 1974. Television and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books.  
Read: Chapter 1, introduction and sections A ("Versions of Cause and Effect in Technology and Society" & B ("The Social History of Television as a Technology"), & chapter 5, section C,  "The Technology as a Cause." 
Source: Course reader [bCourses]

[slides]

 

26 Jan: First Information Technologies: Writing

Writing was “the first information technology,” but it roots go even deeper to the appearance of signs and symbols in neolithic times. We’ll look at how the idea of writing, still the great intellectual achievement of the species, slowly emerged over millennia.

Required Readings

Marshack, Alexander. 1999. "The Art and Symbols of Ice-Age Man, " pp. 5-14 in David Crowley (ed.) Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Allyn & Bacon.
Source: Course reader Also: [hyperlink]

Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. 2009. The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
Read: Chs 1, 2, 4, 12.
Source: ebrary [hyperlink]

[slides]

 

WEEK 3 

 BANCROFT LIBRARY TOUR  ** SIGN UP HERE:[Google doc]:

Mon Jan 30, 2:00-3:00

Tues Jan 31, 2:00-3:00

Weds Feb 1, 10:00-11:00 & 12:00-1:00

Thurs Feb 2,  12:30-1:30 

 

31 Jan: Cultural Effects of Writing

Some have argued that the development of alphabetic writing in Greece was crucial to the emergence of science, philosophy, and history, and changed human consciousness and the organization of society—the earliest claim for technological determinism. But what about China and India? We’ll look at both sides of the question.

Required Readings

Gough, Kathleen. 1975. "Implications of Literacy in Traditional China and India." pp. 70-84. in Jack Goody (ed.) Literacy in Traditional Societies.. Allyn & Bacon.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Source: Google books [hyperlink] Also online here.

Havelock, Eric, 1980 "The Coming of Literate Communication to Western Culture," Journal of Communication, 30(1): 90-98.
Source: Wiley [hyperlink]

Additional Materials

Scribner, Silvia and Michael Cole. 1988. "Unpackaging Literacy." Social Science Information, 77(1).
Source: Sage [hyperlink]

[slides]

 

2 Feb: Manuscript "Revolution" and the Authority of Text

Although print is often credited with bringing about an "information revolution" (a topic we will discuss next week), other, earlier technologies have also been seen as transformational.

Note: We are now going back to "primary texts," texts by people who lived through the changes we are discussing. As you read these texts, one almost 2500 years old (from the great philosopher, Socrates), the other more than 500 years old, ask yourself whether these have anything to tell us about information in the modern world and the changes we are living through today. Be prepared to discuss your reactions in class. (The Trithemius is a "parallel text" with Latin facing English. Only those fluent in Latin need read the Latin pages.)

Required Readings

Plato. 1973 [c. 360 bce]. Phaedrus & the Seventh & Eighth Letters. W. Hamilton, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Read: "Prelude," pp. 21-26; & "The Inferiority of the Written to the Spoken Word" & "Recapitulation and Conclusion" pp. 95-103.
Source: Course reader

Trithemius, Johannes. 1974 [1492]. In Praise of Scribes. R. Behrendt (ed.). Lawrence, KA: Coronado Press.
Read Chapters I-III, V-VII, XIV.
Source: Course reader

[slides]

 

WEEK 4

7 Feb: Print "Revolution"

Printing is often credited with producing the first great technological revolution, bringing about, some have argued, democracy, science, and modern society. Today, people often herald the significance of a technology with the lead "not since the invention of the printing press ...." The readings for this class look at how print appeared to contemporaries: to Desiderius Erasmus (1467?-1536), one of the great figures of the European Enlightenment, and to William Caxton (1415?-1492), who brought printing technology from continental Europe to England.  (In Caxton's case, you will be reading text from one of the first books printed in English.) The readings call on us to consider how these views, published over 500 years ago, fit with the great claims made for printing (and technology more generally) today.   Note that, although last week we read a far older text (from Plato), we read it in translation.  Caxton's text is written in the English of his day, and that presents challenges.

Required Readings

Erasmus, Desiderius. 2001 [1506], The Adages of Erasmus. William Barker (ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Read: "Festina Lente" (Adage III.1) pp. 132-153.
Source: Course reader [note on some right-hand pages the ends of the lines are missing]

Caxton, William. 1475.  Printer's Prologue to Raoul Lefevre's  History of Troy.
[look to bottom of page for Roman type].
Source: bCourses

 [slides]

 

9 Feb: The Rise of Literacy

The “modern informational system” begins with the rise of popular literacy in the Renaissance and after, along with the standardization of vernacular (i.e., common spoken) languages like English and French and the appearance of dictionaries and the press, as written communication assumes a more central role in national life. In this class we’ll explore these connections.

Required Readings

McArthur, Tom. 1986. "The Legislative Urge" & "Thematic Lexicography," chapters 12 & 14 in Worlds of Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Source: Course reader.

Adams, Michael.  2009  "What Samuel Johnson Really Did." Humanities 30(5).
Source: (neh.gov) [hyperlink]

Suggested reading

Johnson, Samuel. 1755. "Preface" A Dictionary of the English Language. In Peter Martin, ed. (2009). Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings. Harvard University Press, pp. 237-256 
Source: (ebrary)[hyperlink]

[slides]

 

WEEK 5

14 Feb: The Emergence of the Public Sphere

With the rise of print and popular literacy, there arose a new sphere of communication in which the new force of public opinion took form out of a mix of oral and written encounters, which some see as the model for modern networked communication. In this class, we’ll ask what features made the original “public sphere” a break with the past, and how it shaped other institutions.

Required Readings

[Addison, Joseph.] 1710-11. ["Uses of the Spectator"] The Spectator 10, Tuesday, March 13.
Source: Google Books [hyperlink]

[Steele, Richard.] 1711. The Spectator 49, Thursday, April 26.
Source: Google Books [hyperlink]

Darnton, Robert. 2000. "An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris." American Historical Review 105.1.
Source: JSTOR [hyperlink]

Cowan, Brian. 2005. "Inventing the Coffee House" and "Penny Universities," pp. 79-112 in The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven. Yale University Press.
Source: Course Reader

[slides]

 

16 Feb:  Scientific "Revolution"

Though, as we have seen, science is sometimes portrayed as the result of the "print revolution," it is also credited with bringing about its own revolution. We will explore this topic through the writing of Thomas Sprat, whose history of the path-breaking Royal Society, was published 350 years ago, and Richard Steele, a celebrated essayist, who turns our attention to medicine and concerns about "fake" medicine.

The Royal Society was founded in England in 1660. It still exists today and claims to be the world's oldest scientific society. Its journal Transactions of the Royal Society is still published. Thomas Sprat (1635-1713) joined the Society in 1663 and was asked to write its history. In this book, then, we have a contemporary, insider's account of the founding of a very influential scientific society, one that people argue was at the center of the "scientific revolution" in the English-speaking world and beyond. Because Sprat's book was written in the seventeenth century, however, his text (like Caxton's, earlier) is a challenge. But it is manageable and even rewarding with patience. Take it slowly. The section you have to read, pages 60-79, is not very long. If you keep going, what is at first confusing may become clear (or irrelevant). Mark up passages that don't make sense (as well as those that interest you) to discuss in class, but keep on reading. As you read, ask yourself how much this does or does not resemble what we think of as modern science.

Required Reading

[Steele, Richard], 1712. "Essay against Quacks," The Spectator 572 Monday, July 26.
Source: EEBO [hyperlink]

Sprat, Thomas. 1667. The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge. London.
Read: pp. pp 60-79
Source: bcourses [hyperlink] (If you go to Early English Books Online, you will be able to see the pages as they appeared in the original book.)

Sprat divides his history into three parts. The first gives the background of the group which formed the Royal Society. The second describes what they did that earned them the title "Royal Society" (in 1662). And the third describes what they did between 1662 and the publication of Sprat's book in 1667. You are asked to read passages from the second part:

Start at page 6 [page 60 in the original, with the paragraph that begins, "I come now to the Second Period of my Narration…" and read to p. 16 [79 in the original], "The Royal Society will become Immortal.")

[slides]

 

WEEK 6

21 Feb: Reference Books and the Organization of Knowledge

Our notion of “knowledge” really dates from the eighteenth century, marked by the emergence of the encyclopedia, modern libraries and museums and academic disciplines—all of whose traces are still evident today in everything from Wikipedia to a college course catalogue.

Required Readings

McArthur, Tom. 1986. "Reference and Revolution" & "Thematic Lexicography," chapters 13 & amp 14 in Worlds of Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Source: Course reader.

Diderot, Denis. "Detailed Explanation of the System of Human Knowledge." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Richard N. Schwab and Walter E. Rex. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009 [link]  Also here

[Diderot, Denis] Map of the system of human knowledge. [link] (graphical representation of D's system) also here

"Encyclopedists." Article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [link]

Also helpful:

Darnton, Robert. 1984 "Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge: The epistemological strategy of the Encyclopédie, in The Great Cat Massacre (Perseus). Read pp. 191-200. ebook at ACLS: [link]

Blom, Phillip. 2005. Enlightening the World: Encyclopédie, The Book That Changed the Course of History. Macmillan. Pp. 139-153. Google Books [link]

[slides]

 

23 Feb: Information as Property

Information, it has famously been claimed, "wants to be free." Nevertheless, people have long sought to control it. One way they have tried to do this is by making it into property--intellectual property. The reading for this class will introduce you to the laws that introduced fundamental types of IP to the English-speaking world. As you read them, consider the extent to which we are still subject to these particular laws.

Note:  The Statute of Anne and Constitution have modern typographical versions beneath the more "Caxton" like original texts.

Required Reading

Statute of Anne [1710]
Source: Copyrighthistory.org [hyperlink]

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8. [1789]
Source: U.S. Archives [hyperlink]

U.S Copyright Act [1790].
Source: U.S Copyright Office [hyperlink]

An Act to Amend the Several Acts for the Encouragement of Learning [54 Geo III 156] [1814]
Read:Section IV
Source: Copyrighthistory.org [hyperlink]

An Act Concerning Trade Marks and Names. [1863]
Source: bCourses [hyperlink]

An Act to Revise, Consolidate, and Amend the Statutes Relating to Patents and Copyrights [1870]
Read: Sections 77-84
Source: bCourses [hyperlink]

[slides]

 

WEEK 7

28 Feb: Unnoticed Revolutions? Time, Space and Money

Writing, print, science, and literacy are generally recognized for their transformational contributions to modern society. But in acknowledging them what might we be overlooking? This class will look at the less-heralded informational contributions of numeracy, and in particular of regularized time, mapped space, and financial accounting.  The readings look at what a “Young Man” in Eighteenth Century America hoping to take control of his life by becoming a farmer or a businessman would be expected to know about these issues of time, space, and money.  

Required Readings

Fisher,  George. 1748. The American Instructor or Young Man’s Best Companion Ninth Edition.  Philadelphia.

Read the title page and the concluding section,  “Advice to a young tradesman, written by an old one" (pp. 375-377).  Then scan the sections on “Bookkeeping” (i.e. the management of money, pp. 153-162) and “Land Measure” (i.e., the measurement of space, pp. 208-211)
[you can find these pages extracted here in a pdf or see the whole book online at Eighteenth Century Collections here]

Mather, William.  1775. The Young Man’s Companion.  24th Edition. London

Scan “Chronology”  (i.e. the measurement of time, pp. 255-265).
[you can find this extract here in a pdf or see the whole book online at Eighteenth Century Collections here]

[slides]

 

2 March: Literacy and the Nineteenth Century Public Sphere

With the nineteenth-century rise of universal schooling and the appearance of the modern postal system and mass-circulation daily newspaper, we see the beginnings of our notion of mass literacy, and of the debates people have about it (even now, when talking about technology): is literacy a tool for social control or does it enable subversive thinking?

Required Reading

Freire, Paulo. 1998 [1970]. “The adult literacy process as cultural action for freedom,” in Harvard Educational Review. Cambridge; Winter. [link]

Henkin, David. 2006.  The Postal Age, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Read "Becoming Postal" " section of ch. 1, pp.15-41
Also suggested: section of ch. 6 "Mass Mailings" pp. 148-171 (to "part of the same network").

[Link]
 

WEEK 8

7 March:  The rise of "Objectivity": Politics and Propaganda

We think of “information” as playing a central role in political life: a healthy society, we say, requires strong and independent media. But the development of the media as an informational tool was paralleled by their increasing use as vehicles for manipulation of public opinion, creating a tension that continues to this day, as the transmission of information moves to new technological bases.

Required Reading

Schudson, Michael. 2003. "Where News Came From: The History of Journalism," ch. 4 in The Sociology of News. New York: Norton.

Read: pp. 64-89.
Source: Course reader.

Irwin, Will. 1936. Propaganda and the News, Or What makes you think so? McGraw-Hill. 

Read Ch. 1, “Propaganda” pp 3-5, Ch. 11 “Germany goes to school.” pp. 121-136, Ch. 13, “The Allies learn the lesson” pp. 149-160, Ch. 16, “America breaks a precedent,” pp. 183-202, Ch. 19, “Export propaganda” pp. 240-245 Source: HathiTrust reader [link]. Also as pdf here.

Additional Materials

Marlin, Randall, 2002. "History of Propaganda" pp. 62-94 in Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion. Toronto: Broadview Press.
Read: pp. 62-94.
Source: Course reader.

[slides]

 

9 March:  Advertising

As newspapers became a key component of society's information infrastructure and the related public sphere, so too did advertising, which was used to support that infrastructure. This combination, we shall see, raised for the eighteenth century many of the questions we still need to confront today as many of our key informational resources are still supported by advertising.

Required Reading

Johnson, Samuel. 1761. "On Advertising." The Idler 40 (Jan 20): 224-229.
Source: ECCO [hyperlink]

McKendrick, Neil. 1982. "Josiah Wedgwood and the Commercialization of the Potteries," pp. 100-145 in McKendrick et al. (eds.) Birth of a Consumer Society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Source: Course reader.

[slides]

 

WEEK 9

14 March:  Communications "Revolution"

This week we turn to more widely acknowledged information technologies, the telegraph and the telephone and once again consider the claims that were made for them at the time and how those claims look today. The class also brings us into California with Henry George's essay.

Required Reading

George, Henry.  1869.  “The Western Union Telegraph Company and the California Press,” New York Herald, April 25.
Source: bCourses [hyperlink]

Green, Norvin. 1883. "The Government and the Telegraph, " North American Review 137: 422-434.
Source: Hathi Trust [hyperlink]

Hubbard, Gardiner G. 1883. "Government Control of the Telegraph, " North American Review 137: 521-534.
Source: Hathi Trust [hyperlink]
[note: the right-hand ends of lines on pp. 528-534 of this article have not been properly scanned, but you should be able to understand the article nonetheless.]

[slides]

 

16 March: Technologies of the Image

The invention of photography played a central role in nineteenth-century thought, not just for its own sake but as a model for the “objective” view of the world sought after by journalists and scientists and a means of documenting social life.

Required Reading

Newhall, Beaumont. 1964. The History of Photography, From 1839 to the Present Day. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
Read: "Portraits for the Million," and "The Faithful Witness," pp. 47-81 (192-216 in reader). Source: Course reader.

Edgar Allan Poe. 1840. “The Daguerreotype." Alexander’s Weekly Messenger (Philadelphia), 15 January. At Daguerreotype archive. [link].

Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. "The Modern Public and Photography." Revue Française, Paris, 10 Juin. In Jonathan Mayr; (ed.), Art in Paris: 1845--62, London: Phaidon, 1964, pp. 151-5. [link] 

Lewis W. Hine. 1909. “Social Photography; How the Camera May Help in the Social Uplift,” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction at the Thirty-sixth Annual Session held in the City of Buffalo, New York, June 9-16, ed. Alexander Johnson (Fort Wayne, IN: Press of Fort Wayne, 1909): 355-59. [link] Also here, in cleaner version but without introduction. 

See selection of Hines' photographs here

[slides]

 

WEEK 10

21 March: Computer "Revolution"

We tend to see ourselves as beneficiaries of a 20th-century revolution introduced by the computer and so to accept the computer as the machine that "changed the world." In this class we will discuss the nineteenth-century origins of the modern computer, looking through the eyes of its early designers, and contemplate why it took so long for the world to change.

Required Reading/Viewing

Graham-Cumming, John. 2012 "The Greatest Machine That Never Was," TEDx (video). 29 April.
Watch: Entire video.
Source: TEDx [hyperlink]   This twelve-minute video will introduce you to Babbage and Lovelace.  Meanwhile, you can think of Lardner as the Graham-Cumming of his day.

Babbage, Charles. 1822. A Letter to Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart, President of The Royal Society ... On the Application of Machinery to the Purpose of Calculating and Printing Mathematical Tables. London: B & A Taylor.
Read: All
Source: Hathi Trust [hyperlink]

Lardner, Dionysius. 1834. [Review of Babbage's Writings] Edinburgh Review, July: 263-327.
Read: "Introduction," pp. 263 to the break on 285, to get a sense of how the Difference Engine worked and how it was seen by contemporaries.
Source: Hathi Trust [hyperlink]

Lovelace, Ada. 1852. "Notes by the Translator" to L.F. Menabrea, "On Babbage's Analytic Engine."
Read: beginning of "Note G", pp 722 to the end of point 6 on page 723, to get a sense both of the Analytical Engine and of Lovelace's insight.
Source: Hathi Trust [hyperlink]

[slides]

 

23 March: Midterm Exam

 

WEEK 11

27-31 March: Spring Break

 

WEEK 12

4 April: Broadcast

The shaping of radio and television in the twentieth century was a product of complex interactions between the developers of the technology, the military, the state, commercial interests, and public institutions, which led to broadcast media taking different forms in different nations. These issues are still with us as “broadcast” moves to a new technological base.

Required Reading

Czitrom, Daniel J. 1982. "The Ethereal Hearth: American Radio from Wireless through Broadcasting, 1892-1940," pp. 60-88. in Media and the American Mind. University of North Carolina Press.
Source: Course reader.

Bliven, Bruce. 1924. "Radio's Promise and Pitfalls." in David Welky, ed. America Between the Wars, 1919-1941: A Documentary Reader. Wiley. pp. 85-88. Source: Google Books [link] Also here as pdf [link] 

[slides] Audio of Lecture (first half)

 

6 Apr: Advent of the Internet

Like broadcast before it, the “internet” emerged out of the complicated relations between technology, the military, commercial interests and civic institutions such as the university. Was it ultimately inevitable that the technology took the form it did, or could things have fallen out differently?

Required Reading

Berners-Lee, Tim. 2000. "info.cern.ch." Chapters 1-3 in Weaving the Web. New York City: HarperCollins.
Read: pp. 1-34.
Source: Course reader.

Morozov, Evgeny. 2012. "Making History (More than a Browser Menu)." Chapter 10 of Net Delusion : The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Public Affairs. On ebrary. [hyperlink]

Leiner, Barry M., Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff, "A Brief History of the Internet," The Internet Society.
Source: The Internet Society [hyperlink].

Abbate, Janet. 2000. Inventing the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapter 1, "White Heat and Cold War: The Origins and Meaning of Packet Switching." Source: Google Books [hyperlink].

[slides]

WEEK 13

11 April: Storage and Search

We tend to associate storage and search with digital technologies, but in this class we will look back at their earlier history and consider in what ways modern search technologies have and have not changed things for the better.

Required Reading

Bush, Vannevar. 1945. As We May Think, The Atlantic Monthly. 176 (1): 101-108.
Source: The Atlantic [hyperlink]          

Döpfner, Matthias. 2014."Why We Fear Google" Frankfurter Allgemeine, April 17
Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine  [hyperlink].

Schmidt. Eric. 2014. “A Chance for Growth.” Frankfurter Allgemeine, April 4.
Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine  [hyperlink].

Zuboff, Shoshana. 2014. “Dark Google." Frankfurter Allgemeine, April 30.
Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine  [hyperlink]. 

[slides]

 

13 Apr: class cancelled

 

 

WEEK 14

18 Apr:  Social Implications of the Internet (Part 1)

The internet disconnects, disintermediates, and disaggregates the world of public communication and the diffusion of knowledge creating new forms and disrupting or transforming old ones. What form will the book, the newspaper, the scientific journal and other informational media assume?

 Required Reading:

Auletta, Ken. 2010. "Publish or Perish." The New Yorker, April 26.
Source: The New Yorker [hyperlink]

Hughes, Evan. 2013. “Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future". Wired, March 19. [hyperlink]

Horowitz, Anthony. 2012. "Do we still need publishers?” The Guardian, Feb. 27 [hyperlink]

Connolly, Ray. "Who needs publishers?" The Guardian, Aug. 12. [hyperlink]

Suggested:

Gessen, Keith. 2014. "The war of the words." Vanity Fair Hive, Nov. 6. [hyperlink] (Background on Goodreads)

Packer, George. 2014. "Cheap Words." The New Yorker, Feb. 17. [hyperlink] (Excellent background on Amazon and the publishing business)

[slides]

 

20 Apr: Surveillance and the Case of China's Social Credit System

In our discussion of the debate between Google and Axel Springer, we briefly touched upon the potential Google has to turn user data over to the U.S. government. How might concerns about internet surveillance conducted by major technology companies be regarded in the Chinese political context? As a seemingly new system of centralized data collection and credit scoring of citizens emerges, what are some the trade-offs people might make for the sake of convenience and financial inclusion?

Required Reading:

2016. "Big data, meet Big Brother: China invents the digital totalitarian state." The Economist, Dec. 17. [hyperlink]

Ahmed, Shazeda. 2017. "Cashless Society, Cached Data: Security Considerations for a Chinese Social Credit System." Citizen Lab, Jan. 20. [hyperlink]  

WEEK 15

25 April: Social Implications of the Internet (Part 2)

The internet, we are told, has made interconnection instantaneous, finally annihilating time and space. So in this class we shall consider the question, why on earth are we all here?

Required Reading

Marshall, Alfred. 1920. "Industrial Organization, Continued: The Concentration of Industries in Particular Localities," book IV chapter X (section iv.x.1-15) in Principles of Economics. London: Macmillan & Co.
Source: econlib.com [hyperlink]

"The Revolution Begins at Last," Economist 1995, Sept 30.
Source: Course reader

 [slides] 

27 April: Politics and Pollution

Twenty-five years ago, the prospects for the digital future were largely hopeful. Now the digital world often seems to be pervaded by various forms of informational pollution, such as misinformation, hate groups, pornography, and "fake news." On the basis of what we have learned about the development of earlier technologies, what forms might (partial) solutions take?

Required Reading

Welding, Mike. 2017. "Solutions that can stop fake news spreading.” bbc.com, Jan. 30. [link]

Talbot, Adela. 2017. "Separating fact from fiction using a 'fake news’ algorithm.” phys.org, Feb. 16. [link]

Holmes, Ryan. 2016. "The Problem Isn’t Fake News, It’s Bad Algorithms—Here’s Why.” observer.com, Dec. 8. [link]

Domonoske, Camila. 2016. "Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds.” NPR.org, Nov. 23. [link]

Type, Lindsey and Anne-Marie Slaughter. 2017. "Media Literacy and the Role of Our Nation’s Schools.” psmag.com, March 28. [link]

Allcott, Hunt and Matthew Gentzkow. 2017. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.” Working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, No. 23089, 2017. [link]

Glaser, April. 2017. "Google is rolling out a fact-check feature in its search and news results." recode.net, April 8. [link]

Zuckerberg, Mark. 2016. Facebook and the election. Facebook post, Nov. 12. [link] See also Zuckerberg interview with Fast Company, April 11, 2017. [link]

[Slides]

WEEK 16

RRR Week

 

WEEK 17

10 May Final Exam 11:30-2:30