Communications,
Culture, and Society

Professor: Paul Starr.
Tuesday-Thursday, 10 a.m.; third hour to be determined.

Grading

1. Midterm Exam: 20%. Questions for the midterm (more than will actually be asked) will be distributed in advance; the exam itself will be completed in class.

2.Take-home Final Exam: 30%. The final will cover the entire course, weighted somewhat to the second half. [But see below: "No final exam option."]

3. Papers: 30%.


(a) Three 2-page memos (300-400 words). 10%
(b) Term paper, 12-15 pages (2,500-3,000 words). 20%

4. Oral Participation and Presentations: 20%. Students will be expected to make brief presentations of their memos. During the last three weeks of the semester, students will have an opportunity to make oral presentations of working drafts of their term papers in order to get feedback and improve the final drafts.

NO FINAL EXAM OPTION. In place of the final exam, a student may do a term paper involving substantial original research. The expected length would be roughly 20-25 pages, and the paper would be worth 50 percent of the final grade.

Requirements

Readings.

All readings are available for free in one of three forms: 1) regular reserve at Firestone Library; (2) Electronic reserves, or the "course documents" folder at Blackboard; or (3) through a direct hyperlink from the online reading list at Blackboard. If you discover that a reading is not accessible, please notify Professor Starr as soon as possible.

In addition, most readings are also available for purchase in one of two ways: either as books ordered through the Princeton University Store, or as part of a packet of readings at Pequod Copy in the basement of the U-Store. The books ordered for the course appear in a list below. Where possible, you may want to buy used copies of the books at cheaper prices, either from the U-Store or online at places like Amazon.

Memos.

The three memos should critically evaluate individual readings in the course. You should plan to write two memos before the break and one after.

The best memos zero in on one or two central points in the readings and make an argument of their own. While you may want to restate points that the author made, a mere summary of the reading is not an ideal memo. You may use the memo to criticize the work, raise a question about it, do a close reading of some part of the text, explain why it is (or is not) significant, draw connections to other readings, or in some other way give your "take" on the material.

Memos should be e-mailed to the professor by 5 p.m. the day before the readings are due for discussion. In e-mailing memos, put the text into the body of your e-mail message (for example, you can write the memo in MS Word and then "copy" and "paste" it into the e-mail message); please do not use attachments.

Term Papers.

Term papers are expected to deal in greater detail with one of the issues raised in the course and to reflect some additional research beyond the assigned readings. Papers should be from 12 to 15 pages in length (or between 2,500 and 3,000 words).
Schedule for papers:

March 4: paper topics due. Provide a one-page description of the paper you plan to write.
Week of April 15: oral presentations of draft papers begin.
May 9, noon: final drafts of papers due at Sociology Department.

Books Available for Purchase at the U-Store.

1. Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder, News that Matters: Television and American Opinion.
2. Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.
3. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusement
4. Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922
5. W. Russell Neuman, The Future of the Mass Audience.
6. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen