Block 1

Week 1 (15 September): 

Blogging with wordpress

Resources

• Watch knowledge clips about WordPress (apologies for the audio quality):
  • Installing (useful if you are interested in getting your own WordPress powered websites, but not necessary for your course activity)
  • Posts (watch this before making your first post)
  • Themes (useful if you are interested in getting your own WordPress powered websites, but not necessary for your course activity)
• Gutenberg WordPress Editor FAQ (wordpress.com, 2018)
• The History of WordPress (WPBeginner.com, 2018)
• Creative Commons Images for non-Copyright materials for your blogs. You can also try Google Image Search with Usage Rights, Wikimedia Commons, or Archive.org.
• Video on copyright by Youtuber Tom Scott

Read

NB here and below, “read”means before next class. In addition, unless hyperlinked, the texts can be found on Brightspace.

• Science Blogging: The Essential Guide
  • Chapter 1 (Wilcox, 2016)
  • Chapter 11 (Lillie, 2016)

Things to do

• Sign up for the course blog via digmedia.lucdh.nl/login,
  • when you choose a username, use your own name
    • Exception: if you are not comfortable using your own name, you are allowed to use a pseudonym if you let Janessa Vleghert and I know via Teams it is you.
  • familiarize yourself with the WordPress CMS Gutenberg editor
  • Make sure you know how to create posts
  • Learn about the Roles plugin (i.e. understand how you can control the visibility of your content)
  • Write your first post! Make sure to flag your group tag in your post!

A Hyperfast History of the Digital

Resources

• Lecture slides can be found here.

Read

• Digital Media and Society, Chapter 1 (Lindgren 2017)

NB Here and below, “Fun” means it is an optional thing to do.

Things to do

• Get to know about the basic workings of the web through Part 1 of the Working with the Web tutorial.
• Fun:
  • The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage comic.

Week 2 (22 September): 

The World Brain(drain)

Resources

• Lecture slides can be found here.

Read

• The Brain Organization of the Modern World, in H.G. Wells’ World Brain (1938).
• The Anatomy of a Search Engine (Brin and Page, 1998). 

Things to do

• Set featured images on any posts you have made so far.
• Include at least one image, of which you have use rights, in your upcoming blog post.
• Fun:
  • Watch Google and the World Brain documentary on Archive.org
  • Drop by the during my Open Office hours (Thursday from 15:00-17:00; Veth 1.07) and I can give you a tech-geeky, small tour of the Digital Lab and our Livestream studio.

Week 3 (29 September): 

The Valley where Gold turned into Silicon (and back again)

Resources

• Lecture slides can be found here, after class.

Read

• Silicon Valley Explained in Adam Fisher’s Valley of Genius
• Sillicon Valley by Christine Finn in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World

Things to do

• Familiarize yourself with HTML and WordPress’ Code Editor, through Part 2 of the Working with the Web tutorial. Try editing part of your post using WordPress’ html code editor.
• Fun:
  • Learn how to make a podcast via the knowledge clips.
  • Listen to some episodes of the Valley of Genius podcast.
  • Read Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution or watch the documentary based on it.
  • Check out the Hacker Quarterly or the MIT Gallery of Hacks
  • Read about or watch the origin of “Information wants to be free”
  • Happy Leids Ontzet! Stay safe, healthy and have fun!

Week 4 (6 October):

The Ego Online

• Lecture slides can be found here, after class.

Read

• The I in Internet in Jia Tolentino’s (2019) Trick Mirror.
• ‘The Presentation of Self in the Online World’: Goffman and the study of online identities. Bullingham and Vasconcelos, 2013

Things to do

• Fun:
  • Find out about the cool little magic of anchor links! Very useful if you need to reference something in your post (e.g. a bibliographic entry) or a footnote.
  • Learn a bit about making videos with the knowledge clips.
  • Fun: We Live in Public (link to Full Documentary)

Week 5 (13 October):

The Network Society

• Lecture slides can be found here, after class.

Read

• Maffesoli’s From Society to Tribal Communities
• Pick and read one (or more) of the chapters on Digital Communities
  • Pearce and Artemesia’s Communities of Play
  • Miller’s Tales from Facebook
  • Burges and Green’s YouTube
  • Zhu’s The psychology behind video games during COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Kennedy’s TikTok dance and the E-girl Aesthetic

Things to do

• Remember this is online, but referencing is still very important. In fact, if a piece of information is not linked, it does not exist!
  • Make sure you use urls to link to content online.
  • If you have included references that are not online, but that you have listed at the bottom of your post, you can use the magic of anchor links to put in a link.
  • If you made videos or podcasts, you can still use references, e.g. by putting a list of links in the descriptions of the video.
  • Go back and check this is in order for all your content so far!
• Fun: Join one of the livestreams of the Streaming the Past project!

20 & 27 October: No Class

Things to do

• The ‘My Take-aways from the Course’-test is online on Brightspace from 18-30 October. Don’t forget to complete it as it is part of your final grade for this course.
• This is a good time to lay out a strategy for the remainder of your content production. It is also a good moment to get back and improve your previous blogs with your growing understanding of how WordPress works.
• Fun: Spend a day offline!