MEVIT4614 - Reading List, Schedule
Fall, 2014
(1) Tuesday, Sept. 2
Course introduction: pornography, democracy, regulation?
Opening lecture:
Course overview:
general themes, particular issues;
structure and requirements, including attendance, qualification
task, and exam requirements;
first overview of “alphabet soup” of various agreements and
agencies important for the course.
Opening Lecture / discussion
“Pornography” – what is it? why is it a problem (if it is)? IF it’s a problem
– what ought / can we (who is the “we”?) do about it?
Reading
C. Ess, from: “Still More Ethical Issues: Digital Sex and Games,”
(Chapter 5) Digital Media Ethics, 2nd edition, pp. 157-178. (PDF
online)
Democracy – what is it? And: how far may “democracy” be realized in a
globalized world interconnected via networked / digital media?
Reading
C. Ess, from: “Friendship, Democracy and Citizen
Journalism,” (Chapter 4), Digital Media Ethics, 2nd edition, pp. 142151. (PDF online)
Additional themes: freedom of expression; emancipation?
Reading
Walid Al-Saqaf, “Freedom of Speech” (selection from ch. 3 of his
PhD dissertation, Breaking Digital Firewalls: Analyzing Internet
Censorship and Circumvention in the Arab World. Örebro
University, 2014), pp. 71-82. (PDF online)
And: Global Media and Communication Policy (GMCP)
Reading
(1) Robin Mansell & Marc Raboy, Introduction: Foundations of the
Theory and Practice of Global Media and Communication Policy.
(pp. 1-15)
NB! readings marked by a chapter number in parentheses are from:
R. Mansell and M. Raboy (Eds). 2011. The Handbook of Global Media and
Communication Policy. PDFs online.
Workshop / discussion
We will review and discuss your responses to a two case studies:
1) “Should ISPs be told to block “adult” content?”
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<http://freespeechdebate.com/en/discuss/should-isps-be-toldto-block-adult-content/>
2) “The Creepy Facebook Study” (PDF in Fronter)
Please review especially the first few pages of this article – and,
ideally, print out for reference in class.
(2) Friday, Sept. 5
Guest lecturer: Elisabeth Staksrud, “Regulation of Risky Online Content?”
Reading
E. Staksrud, Children in the Online World,
E. Staksrud, Children in the Online World: Risk, Regulation, Rights
(2013), ch. 1 – Introduction (pp. 1-12);
ch. 2, Individualization (pp. 13-42)
Part II, Regulation! (pp. 82-142)
Optional (but strongly recommended):
Sandra Braman, Information Policy and Identity, ch. 5, Change of State, pp.
116-166.
(3) Tuesday, Sept. 9
“Pornography” and democracy: freedom of expression and emancipation
Core Perspectives and Issues in Regulating Online Content
Readings
Al-Saqaf, “Protection of Minors,” Digital Firewalls, pp. 47-50;
UNESCO Report, "There Shall Be Freedom of Expression" Introductory materials + ch. 2 (PDF): pp. 5-14, 27-40.
Seminar – workshop – discussion: “pornography” as emancipatory / freedom of
expression?
Readings
Naomi Wolf, "The Porn Myth.”
<http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/>
Smith, Clarissa. Pornographication: A Discourse for All Seasons,
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 6(1): 103–8
Bäcke, Maria (2011) Make-Believe and Make-Belief in Second Life
Role-Playing Communities, Convergence: The International
Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 18(1): 85–
92.
Smith, Clarissa, Feona Attwood, and Martin Barker (2012) Porn
Research: Preliminary Findings,
<www.pornresearch.org/results.html>
Thorn, Clarisse (2012) Introduction: Reflections on Game Rape,
Feminism, Sadomasochism, and Selfhood. In C. Thorn and J.
Dibbell (eds). Violation: Rape in Gaming, pp. 4-23. CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform. (Order online as an ebook
from: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/245632
Alexander, Leigh (2009) And You Thought Grand Theft Auto Was
Bad: Should the United States Ban a Japanese “Rape Simulator’
Game? Slate, March 9, www.slate.com/articles/technology/
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gaming/2009/03/and_you_thought_grand_theft_auto_was_bad
.html?GT1=38001
(4) Friday, Sept. 12
Additional introductory considerations (GMCP)
Readings
Sandra Braman, Bounding the Domain: Information Policy for the
Twenty-first Century, Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power (MIT
Press, 2012), pp. 39-66.
From Mansell and Raboy
(NB: not all of these chapters will be required reading – required chapters
will be specified during previous class meeting)
(2) Ted Magder The Origins of International Agreements and Global
Media: The Post, the Telegraph, and Wireless Communication Before
World War I. (pp. 23-39)
(3) Don MacLean, The Evolution of GMCP Institutions. (pp. 40-57)
(4) William H. Melody, Whose Global Village? (pp. 58-78)
(5) Kaarle Nordenstreng, Free Flow Doctrine in Global Media Policy. (pp.
79-92).
(6) Rikke Frank Jørgensen, Human Rights and Their Role in Global Media
and Communication Discourses. (pp. 95-111)
(5) Tuesday, Sept. 16
Media, Morality, and Rights (GMCP)
Readings
(15) Biswajit Das and Vibodh Parthasarathi, Media Research and Public
Policy: Tiding Over the Rupture. (pp. 245-257)
(17) Karim H. Karim, Global Media Policy and Cultural Pluralism. (pp.
276-292)
(33) Claudia Padovani and Elena Pavan, Actors and Interactions in Global
Communication Governance: The Heuristic Potential of a Network
Approach. (pp. 543-563)
E. Staksrud & J. Kirksæther. 2012. ‘He Who Buries the Little Girl Wins!’
Moral Panics as Double Jeopardy: The Case of Rule of Rose. In C.
Critcher, J. Hughes, J. Petley, & A. Rohloff (eds), Moral Panics in the
Contemporary World, pp. 145-167. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Kirsten Drotner (1999) Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and
Dilemmas of Modernity , Paedagogica Historica: International
Journal of the History of Education, 35:3, 593-619. (Available through
UiO network: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0030923990350303>)
(6) Friday, Sept. 19
Privacy: Basic Conceptions, Arguments, Theories
Reading
Ess, "Privacy" in the global metropolis? (From: Digital Media Ethics, ch. 2:
pp. 35-43; 51-78). (PDF online)
Privacy, protection, regulation? (GMCP)
Readings
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(30) Sandra Braman, Anti-terrorism and the Harmonization of Media and
Communication Policy. (pp. 486-504)
(31) Sonia Livingstone, Regulating the Internet in the Interests of
Children: Emerging European and International Approaches. (pp.
505-520)
(7) Tuesday, Sept. 23
Rights – additional definitions, questions
Reading
E. Staksrud, Children in the Online World, Part III, Rights! (pp. 143-176)
Copyright – basic conceptions, arguments, theories
Reading
Ess, The ethics of copying: is it theft, Open Source, or Confucian homage to
the master? (From: Digital Media Ethics, ch. 3, pp. 91-112). (PDF online)
Copying as liberation – as religion?
Reading
The Missionary Church of Kopimism
<http://kopimistsamfundet.se/english/>
(8) Tuesday, Sept. 30
Copyright vs. Creativity (GMCP)
Readings
(16) Boatema Boateng, Whose Democracy? Rights-based Discourse and
Global Intellectual Property Rights Activism. (pp. 261-274)
(22) Robert G. Picard, Economic Approaches to Media Policy. (pp. 355363)
Mark Latonero, Aram Sinnreich (2014) The hidden demography of new
media ethics. Information, Communication & Society, 17:5, 572-593, DOI:
10.1080/1369118X.2013.808364
Workshop: preparation for in-class presentations (next class meeting)
(9) Tuesday, Oct. 21
Readings
(14) Arne Hintz and Stefania Milan, User Rights for the Internet Age:
Communications Policy According to “Netizens.” (pp. 230-240)
(9) Leslie Regan Shade, Media Reform in the United States and Canada:
Activism and Advocacy for Media Policies in the Public Interest. (pp.
147-162)
(32) Caroline Pauwels and Karen Donders, From Television without
Frontiers to the Digital Big Bang: The EU’s Continuous Efforts to
Create a Future-proof Internal Media Market. (pp. 525-540)
[Review: (17) Karim H. Karim, Global Media Policy and Cultural
Pluralism"; (31) Sonia Livingstone, Regulating the Internet in the
Interests of Children: Emerging European and International
Approaches”; (33) Claudia Padovani and Elena Pavan, Actors and
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Interactions in Global Communication Governance: The Heuristic
Potential of a Network Approach]
In-class presentations: case studies on regulating “risky” materials
online. (Qualification task)
(10) Friday, Oct. 24
Regulation vs. Rights (GMCP)
Readings
(21) Peter S. Grant, The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity:
Cultural Policy and International Trade in Cultural Products. (pp. 336350)
(27) Roberta G. Lentz, Regulation as Linguistic Engineering. (pp. 432-446)
Review: (6) Jørgensen; (31) Livingstone; (5) Nordenstreng; (32) Pauwels &
Donders)
(11) Tuesday, Oct. 28
“Liberation Technology”?
Readings
Diamond, Larry. 2012. Liberation Technology. In L. Diamond and M. F.
Plattner (eds.), Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle
for Democracy, pp. 1-17. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press. (<http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs047n/readings/diamondlibtech.pdf>)
Deibert, Ronald and Rohozinski, Rafal. 2012. Liberation vs. Control: the
Future of Cyberspace. In Diamond and Plattner (eds.), pp. 18-32.
(Diamond and Plattner PDF)
Deibert, Ronald. 2012. International Mechanisms of Cyberspace Controls.
In Diamond and Plattner (eds.), pp. 33-46. (Diamond and Plattner
PDF)
Guest lecturer: Walid Al-Saqaf (PhD student, TED 2012 Senior Global Fellow,
author of Alkasir, a “circumvention software developed to monitor and
circumvent website censorship.”)
Title: Internet regulation: Why censorship cannot work
Abstract: Authoritarian governments have traditionally controlled traditional media through
strict regulations and monopoly of printing presses and broadcasting services. However, with the
advent of the Internet, information started to flow easily and with relatively limited restrictions.
To combat this, governments started filtering websites and some Internet protocols to prevent
users from publishing or reading content the government deemed 'inappropriate' or 'harmful to
national security'. However, it has been proven that the Internet is resilient to filtering in the
traditional sense due to its uniquely decentralized nature. In this lecture, the aim is to
demonstrate how censorship works and why it cannot work with examples from research results
obtained via Alkasir, a software circumvention software developed to monitor and circumvent
website censorship. The emphasis will be on informational and social networking content and
will mostly cover Iran and some Arab countries. The lecture will have a technical presentation of
how the Internet functions, what governments try to do to block certain content and how such
censorship is rendered useless through technical solutions and eventually arguing for the need to
abandon censorship as a method of regulation firstly due to the difficulty in identifying what to
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block (particularly when it deals with informational or social media) but also because it is
technically unfeasible to do so.
(12) Tuesday, November 4
Content vs. Control – I (GMCP)
Readings
(11) Monroe E. Price, Global Media Policy and Crisis States. (pp. 180-207)
(19) Jamal Eddine Naji, The Mediterranean Arab Mosaic between Free
Press Development and Unequal Exchanges with the “North.” (pp.
306-318)
(8) Bart Cammaerts, Power Dynamics in Multi-stakeholder Policy
Processes and Intra-civil Society Networking. (pp. 131-144)
(13) Friday, Nov. 7
Content vs. Control – II (GMCP)
(7) Nico Carpentier Policy’s Hubris: Power, Fantasy, and the Limits
of (Global) Media Policy Interventions. (pp. 113-125)
(28) Margaret Gallagher, Gender and Communication Policy: Struggling
for Space. (pp. 451-461)
(20) Linje Manyozo, Rethinking Communication for Development Policy:
Some Considerations. (pp. 319-335)
(14) Tuesday, November 11
Summing up / discussion of exam questions; suggestions for how to write a
good exam.
Reading
Sandra Braman, Information, Policy, and Power in the Informational State,
ch. 9, Change of State (pp. 313-328).
[Take-home exam: 1 December at 10:00 to 4 December at 14:00]
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