FINAL EXAM

Our Final Exam is on Thursday, December 19, 11:30-2:30PM.

• YOU MUST BRING YOUR STUDENT ID CARD (OR PHOTO ID) TO THE EXAM
• It will have some multiple choice, some "fill in the blank," some essay answer.
• You will NOT need a blue (examination) book.
• Please bring a pen only.
• The exam will only take around 90-120 minutes.

STUDY GUIDE: HERE ARE SIGNIFICANT MATERIALS FROM THE LECTURES WHICH EXAM QUESTIONS MAY ADDRESS:

PEOPLE TO KNOW: Park Dae-Sung ("Minerva") • Tyler Clementi (and his room mate Dharun Ravi) • Gae-Ttong Nyue ("Dog Poo Girl") • Thomas Sawyer vs. Amir Tofangsazan • Jason Fortuny ("Craigslist Experiment") • Jessica Rose Lee ("Lonelygirl15") • Maru (the cat) • Al Gore ("The Gore Bill") • Sen. Ted Stevens ("A Series of Tubes") • Tim Berners-Lee • Megan Meier (and Lori Drew) • Aaron Barr and HBGary • MistahX (Luis Mijangos) • Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi

TERMS AND CONCEPTS TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND Malware • Social Engineering • a Virus • a Trojan Horse • a Worm • a "Zombie" • a "Botnet" • the Low Orbit Ion Cannon • Firesheep • a SlowLoris Attack and a DDoS Attack • Phishing and Smphishing • Skimmers • the 2007 Estonian Cyber-Attacks • Ghost Net • Ghost RAT • the Stuxnet Worm • DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) • 8-Bit Culture • Chiptunes • Gameboy Music • 419 Scams • Scambaiting • Jokeman/Guyman • Mugu • Anonymous (the group) • Project Chanology • Guy Fawkes Mask = "Epic Fail Guy" • "Very Erotic, Very Violent" • In Chinese: "censorship" = "harmonious (héxié)" = "river crab (héxiè)" • The Chinese "Baidu Creatures" • The Chinese "Grass Mud Horse" • heikè = "hacker, hóngkè = "honker" (Chinese "hackivists") • The Digital Divide (Internet use by income, education, age, and ethnicity) • The Global Digital Divide • THE XO-1 Laptop • macro • 241543903 • Wikipedia • information on the Internet is participatory • no standards/proof for publishing information on the Internet (the users is the “fact checker”) • Facebook groups hacked by "Control Your Info" • "Internet Eyes" • The Wikileaks publication of the 2007 helicopter attack on unarmed civilians in Iraq • Porn 2.0 • the over-exaggeration of online predator statistics • the nature of online predators (most pursuing under-age teens, not young children) "The Internet" vs. "The World Wide Web" • ARPAnet and the origins of the modern Internet • "Web 1.0" vs. "Web 2.0" vs. “Web 3.0” • L337 • NSFW (and why people use this) • "Darknet" • "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" • troll • DNFTT • lurker • sockpuppet • bacn • googlewashing /black hat SEO • chu(bou) (Japanese) • emoticons and Emoji (and why we are now using them) • ASCII art / Shift_JIS art • Orz • shock sites • advertising on social networks - products are not social entities • the Chevy Tahoe video fiasco • "The Runescape Mugging" • "The Habbo Hotel Robbery" • "The SIM Mafia" • Goldfarming • Shock Sites • Bitcoins and Bitcoin “mining” • Web 3.0: Augmented Reality, 3D Printing (and its potential hazards), high-information photography, location-based materials • astroturfing • cherryblossoming • cyberspace vs. meatspace • gelivable • emoji • Mistah X (Luis Mijangos) • theft of virtual properties • goldfarming • scambaiting • frames/schemata • “schadenfreude” • the boundaries of “humor” (maintained internally [frames/schemata] and externally [social sanctions]) • memes • “participatory humor” • lolcats • the contexts of humor [universal to interpersonal] • "Visual Anonymity" vs. "Source Anonymity" • pseudonymity • "groups" • assessment • humor • frames/schemata • collective action • collective behavior • groupthink • the need for emoticons in text-based communication (need to communicate emotion in our writing system) • mass publication as a means of public shaming • social sanctions • the inability to implement social sanctions on the Internet (anonymity = difficulty in identifying the culprit) • anonymity provides an arena for deception (419 Scams and "scambaiting") • self-publishing and how this is affecting the (previous) world of publishing (the users are now the “fact checkers” / publishers no longer control “information gatekeeping”) • "assessment signals" vs. "conventional signals" • deception • Dunbar's Number: "strong ties" and "weak ties" and why we keep "weak ties" around • the diffusion of responsibility (in groups) • disinhibition (and the Internet) • Charles Cooley's "Looking Glass Self" • impression management • "front stage" vs. "back stage" • deviance • Information and the Internet: public participation of the filtering, production, and publication of information.

ASSIGNMENT #5 - "MEMES" and DIFFUSION of INTERNET TRENDS

Below is a list of "memes," celebrities, or events that are famous on the Internet. Each student must select one of the below items, OR select a current meme (which would clearly fit the criteria of "an Internet meme") and post the following information (with their name on the assignment) on their team's website.  You must write in your own words, copying any materials without citation is plagiarism.

• When did this begin to become popular/famous on the Internet and why? Provide a context and offer an analysis of why you think this became so popular (if no obvious reason presents itself).
• The details/description of the "meme," person, event, etc.
• If you chose to select your own current meme, it cannot be anything that would be deemed as "offensive."
• How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google Insights" interest).
• Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.
• Include videos or images when relevant to illustrate your description - please try to avoid posting images or video that may be offensive.
• You can select the same meme/subject as a group team-mate (but remember, one of you will do a better job on the assignment and potentially make the other look bad - or if your assignments look too similar, everyone will think you copied off of each other).
• Please make sure your full name is on your assignment, posted on your team's website by Thursday, November 28th.

A list of memes:
• Chocolate Rain
• "Do You Like Mudkip?"
• Nyan Cat
• Epic Beard Man (& Amber Lamps)
• Planking
• Leeroy Jenkins
• Paula Deen Riding Things
• Cinnamon Challenge
• Chuck Norris Facts
• (Full On) Double Rainbow
• Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop
• Gingers Do Have Souls
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us
• (Operation) Lioncash
• Angry Bert
• Kim Jong-Un Looking at Things
• Pokemon "Missingno"
• "Imma Let You Finish" (Kanye West)

ASSIGNMENT #4 - VIDEO COMPETITION

THE ASSIGNMENT:
The objective of this assignment: a hands-on experience in producing and advertising a video online, in a competitive arena. This is the best way to understand the participatory and competitive nature of Internet media.  This assignment is not about exploring illicit ways to increase "hits" on a YouTube video, but how generate content that would be of public interest and how to use social media channels to direct users' attention to a given material online.

THE RULES:
• Each team will create a video and post it on YouTube (NOT Vimeo or any other video site), on WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 27th (NOT before, NOT after). Each team will post their video (in embedded format) on their team website.  

• Admins: you must make your video statistics accessible and available on your YouTube posting.

• Your team will have until Thursday, December 5th to receive 1,500 hits on your video.  Anything less than 1,500 hits will not receive full credit.

• The team that receives the highest number of hits among the class videos will receive an awesome prize. And will be worshipped.

• The video must be made of original content: NO materials filmed before November 14th, 2013.  NO TV clips, NO movie clips, NO video games (or anything else that you did not generate yourself). The subject/content of your video must be original: NO parodies, NO satires, NO spoofs of anything else, NO recycled materials. Your video has to be entirely new content: NO current events, NO news, NO trends, etc.

• You may use copyrighted music, but you risk being edited (muted) by YouTube or the copyright holder = less views/hits.

• Play fair: NO animals or children/babies. Way too easy.

• NO pranks or offensive or explicit materials. Anyone appearing in the video must give consent/permission.

• Nothing illegal.

• All aspects of these videos must be created by team members only - no use of outside parties in the production or distribution of your videos. You cannot enlist others to distribute your video for you, nor can you use any form of pay advertisement. You can, however, post/advertise your video on websites or any other medium you see fit.

• Teams cannot take any measures to affect the rating of another team's video. Teams cannot utilize illicit measures to increase the number of hits on their video (e.g. - "click fraud" or anything similar).

• Utilizing any online services which specialize in providing "hits" to videos (i.e. - "click fraud" or similar services) will result in an automatic failure of the assignment.

• Good luck and have fun.

ASSIGNMENT #3: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ANALYSIS

Each student must post their assignment on their team blog by Friday, November 1st.

• Write at least 2 paragraphs, in clear and specific language.

• Your assignment is to do an analysis/evaluation of a commercial (company) website or a commercial (company) social media page (such as the Facebook page for Kentucky Fried Chicken, etc.).

• Provide an evaluation of this page: do you think that this commercial page is doing a effective job of social media marketing and why?

Address/evaluate this page by analyzing their use of the following features:

• Premiums (giving away free things to attract users/customers)

• Participation (creating events, venues, games, surveys to involve users)

• User-Generated Content (creating venues/galleries to showcase user-submitted materials)

• Customer Service "Portal" (are they providing a "dialogue" environment to communicate with users?)

• Content Flow (are they providing new and engaging materials regularly?)

MIDTERM EXAM

Our midterm exam is on Thurs, Oct 17th.

• YOU MUST BRING YOUR STUDENT ID CARD (OR PHOTO ID) TO THE EXAM
• It will have some multiple choice, some "fill in the blank," some essay answer.
• You will NOT need a blue (examination) book.
• Please bring a pen only.
• The exam will only take around 90-120 minutes.

STUDY GUIDE: HERE ARE SIGNIFICANT MATERIALS FROM THE LECTURES WHICH EXAM QUESTIONS MAY ADDRESS (MORE ITEMS WILL BE ADDED AFTER CLASS THURSDAY OCT 10th):

[Not all of these materials will be on the exam, but if you have a fair understanding of the below materials, you should do fine on the exam. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO DO ALL OF THE READINGS ASSIGNED TO DATE]

PEOPLE TO KNOW: Park Dae-Sung ("Minerva") • Tyler Clementi (and his room mate Dharun Ravi) • Gae-Ttong Nyue ("Dog Poo Girl") • Thomas Sawyer vs. Amir Tofangsazan • Jason Fortuny ("Craigslist Experiment") • Jessica Rose Lee ("Lonelygirl15") • Maru (the cat) • Al Gore ("The Gore Bill") • Sen. Ted Stevens ("A Series of Tubes") • Tim Berners-Lee • Megan Meier (and Lori Drew) • Aaron Barr and HBGary • MistahX (Luis Mijangos) • Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi

TERMS AND CONCEPTS TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND:  419 Scams • Scambaiting • Jokeman/Guyman • Mugu • Anonymous (the group) • Project Chanology • Guy Fawkes Mask = "Epic Fail Guy" • "web log" (Jorn Barger - 1997) "blog" (Peter Merholz - 1999) • DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) • "The Internet" vs. "The World Wide Web" • ARPAnet (the origins of the modern Internet) • "Web 1.0" vs. "Web 2.0" • L337 • NSFW (and why people use this) • "Darknet" • "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" • troll • DNFTT • lurker • sockpuppet • bacn • googlewashing • black hat SEO • chu(bou) (Japanese) • emoticons (and why we are now using them) • "The Runescape Mugging" • "The Habbo Hotel Robbery" • "The SIM Mafia" • Goldfarming • “Expressions Given” and “Expressions Given Off” • “Impression Management” • Cherryblossoming • Astroturfing • Crowdturfing • “Front Stage” vs. “Back Stage” • Cooley’s “Looking-Glass Self” • Dunbar’s Number and “Strong” and “Weak” social ties • Defining “Public” and “Private” • Oversharing • Gatekeeping (Institutional, Traditional Publishing, Personal Information) • The “Streisand Effect” (Reactance) • 8-Bit Culture • Chiptunes • Gameboy Music

GENERAL CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND:  "Visual Anonymity" vs. "Source Anonymity" • pseudonymity • "groups" • assessment • collective action • collective behavior • groupthink • the need for emoticons in text-based communication (need to communicate emotion in our writing system) • mass publication as a means of public shaming • social sanctions and the inability to implement social sanctions on the Internet (anonymity = difficulty in identifying the culprit) • anonymity provides an arena for deception (419 Scams and "scambaiting") • "assessment signals" vs. "conventional signals" • assessment/probing cost • Dunbar's Number • "strong ties" and "weak ties" and why we keep "weak ties" around • the diffusion of responsibility (in groups) • disinhibition (and the Internet) • Charles Cooley's "Looking Glass Self" • our sense of "self" requires social interaction • "expressions given" vs. "expressions given off" • impression management • "front stage" vs. "back stage" 


NOTES FROM THE READINGS:

Ray Maratea, “The e-Rise and Fall of Social Problems: The Blogosphere as a Public Arena”

            Public problems are brought to the attention of the public by individuals or groups (“claims-makers”); however, in older/traditional media types, problems brought to public attention by claims-makers compete for the public’s attention and interest, because traditional media types were a very limited arena (limited time and publishing space to address all social problems).  In essence, public attention is a scarce resource and thus not all public problems get broadly recognized. 

            The issues most likely to become publicly recognized have certain characteristics in common, and effective bloggers have been found to utilize these characteristics : 1). Drama - they are presented by claims-makers in a “dramatic and persuasive manner” 2). Novelty and Saturation - the claims-makers need to remind the public of the importance of a problem, while simultaneously avoiding over-saturation of the media and redundancy (repeating the same message over and over in the same way) 3). Political and Economic Interests - when the problems have political and economic importance 4). Organizational Characteristics - the specific nature of each publication arena affects what is deemed as an important problem to address 5). Cultural Preoccupations - problems which relate to (and are compatible with) cultural concerns are often more likely to become recognized. 

             Audiences (public attention) now has an exponentially great volume of news information at their disposal; information can now be rapidly published to the audience, and at any time of day – on-demand news, and in great volume. 

            Blogging may aid in public problem “claims-making” because they have several attributes that are different than traditional news media: the hierarchical nature of blogs (some have large readerships – providing new media arenas for attracting public attention to social problems), the ability to publish information at any time of the day (compared to traditional media types, which publish perhaps once a day), an increased ability (compared to traditional media) to support problem claims (longer time can be dedicated to addressing a problem), the bloggers’ ability to legitimate their claims through outside verification (bloggers can and do cite and refer to legitimate authorities regarding certain facts and issues), and the “circulation of claims through personalized narratives. . .suited for the audiences of tight-knit blogging communities” (this can stimulate discussion among readers).  

             

John Suler, “The Online Disinhibition Effect”

The points which Suler states as motivating factors in “Online Disinhibition” are: Asynchronicity, Dissociative Anonymity, Dissociative Imagination, Invisibility, Minimization of Status, and Solipsistic Introjection.

Adam Hyde, et al. “What is Collaboration Anyway?”

            “Shared” content is associated with a single author or source, and stands alone.  “Collaboration” is content contributed and modified by multiple authors or sources, in a coordinated effort.  The individual contributions which compose a collaborative work cannot and do not stand alone, but when together constitute a single work.  Collaborative works have a single goal (examples given are Wikipedia entries, where each contributor adds to or edits a given Wikipedia entry for the goal of improving the given entry).

            Some cautions: the example of Stephen Colbert’s campaign to intentionally contribute misinformation to Wikipedia’s entry on “elephant” (a large group, working in collaboration, can also generate an incorrect perception that because enough people contribute to a work, that the information they produce must be correct); musician Kutiman created a “mash-up” of several musicians’ music videos, however this does not constitute “collaboration” because each musician was not knowingly contributing to a common goal.  This article also includes a detailed list of criteria for assessing the “strength” of a collaboration.  

ASSIGNMENT #2: ANALYSIS OF AN ONLINE CRIME

In your assigned reading, John Suler's "Online Disinhibition Effect" [LINK], Suler addresses several reasons why people become "disinhibited" on the Internet: Dissociative Anonymity, Dissociative Imagination, Invisibility, Asynchronicity, Minimization of Status, and Solipsistic Introjection.

Your assignment is to:

• Find, in a news publication, an online crime (something which is illegal which was done using the Internet) which has occurred in the last 9 months.  This online crime can have offline consequences.

• On your team website: post your assignment, describing this crime in your own words (perhaps a paragraph or less).

• Include a link to the news item.

• Of the different causes Suler identifies as generating "disinhibition" (listed above), identify the most likely reason/cause for disinhibition which would motivate the criminal.  In other words, please find an online crime that was likely motivated by disinhibition (by the criminal), and what you identify as the particular cause of this disinhibition (Asynchronicity? Dissociative Imagination? etc.). Please explain your answer in detail.  Please consider that the victim may also have become a victim because they too were disinhibited. If that is the case, please provide an explanation for the victim also. If you cannot identify a crime as being the result of disinhibition (either by the criminal or victim), then search for another online crime example which does.

• This assignment is due, FRIDAY OCTOBER 4th, posted on your team website, WITH YOUR NAME ON IT.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

****NEW READINGS****

• Boyd, Danah “Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle” in The Social Media Reader, Michael Mandiberg (ed), New York University Press, 2012

• Coleman, E. Gabriella “Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls” in The Social Media Reader, Michael Mandiberg (ed), New York University Press, 2012

• Davidson, Patrick “The Language of Internet Memes” in The Social Media Reader, Michael Mandiberg (ed), New York University Press, 2012

• Hyde, Adam et al. “What is Collaboration Anyway?” in The Social Media Reader, Michael Mandiberg (ed), New York University Press, 2012 

• Maratea, Ray "The e-Rise and Fall of Social Problems: The Blogosphere as a Public Arena" Social Problems, Vol. 55, No. 1, 2008. [LINK] [NOTE: This is a JStor article, you need to be on a Berkeley Internet connection to view/download this article].

• Choi, Chong Ju and Ron Berger "Ethics of Global Internet, Community and Fame Addiction"
Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 85, No. 2, 2009. [LINK] [NOTE: This is a JStor article, you need to be on a Berkeley Internet connection to view/download this article].

• Wang, Rong and Suzanne M. Bianchi and Sara Raley "Teenagers' Internet Use and Family Rules: A Research Note" Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 67, No. 5, 2005. [LINK] [NOTE: This is a JStor article, you need to be on a Berkeley Internet connection to view/download this article].

****NEW READINGS****

• Wallace, Benjamin "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin" WIRED Nov 2011 [LINK].

• Welsh, Andrew and Jennifer Lavoie "Risky eBusiness: An Examination of Risk-Taking, Online Disclosiveness, and Cyberstalking Victimization" CyberPsychology 6 (1), 2012 [LINK].

• Glaser, Mark "Your Guide to Citizen Journalism" MediaShift, Sept 2006 [LINK].

• Astleigh, Richard "Web 1.0: Never Giving Up the Early Internet" CyberPsychology and Behavior vol.5 no.1, 2011 [LINK].

• Kushner, David "The Hacker is Watching" GQ Jan 2012 [LINK].

• Suler, John "The Online Disinhibition Effect" CyberPsychology and Behavior vol.7 no.3, 2004 [LINK]. [NOTE: This is a JStor article, you need to be on a Berkeley Internet connection to view/download this article].

• Norton, Quinn "Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz" WIRED Nov 2011 [LINK].

• Dibbell, Julian "The Assclown Offensive: How to Enrage the Church of Scientology" WIRED Sept 2009 [LINK].

• Zetter, Kim "Oil Companies Spring a Leak, Courtesy of Anonymous" WIRED July 2012 [LINK].

• Captain, Sean "Inside Occupy Wall Street's (Kinda) Secret Media HQ" WIRED Nov 2011 [LINK].

• "A Short, Strange History of Anonymous" -