Join us for a five-session reading group on the politics and culture of social media, presented in conjunction with the Wages For Facebook campaign.

Click here to download a printable PDF of the Reading Group schedule and assigned readings.

Introduction: Social media, audiences, and agency
Friday, September 26, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Nicole Cohen

Readings:
Mark Andrejevic. 2011. “Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy.” Surveillance & Society 8(3): 278-287.

José van Dijk. 2009. “Users Like You? Theorizing Agency in User-Generated Content.” Media, Culture & Society 31(1): 41-58.

Is it work? Social media and the great labour debate
Friday, October 10, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Nicole Cohen

Readings:
Tiziana Terranova. 2000. “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.” Social Text 18(2): 33-58.

Nicole Cohen. 2008. “The Valorization of Surveillance: Toward a Political Economy of Facebook." Democratic Communiqué 22(1): 5–22.

Gender and social media
Friday, October 24, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Leslie Shade and Prof. Victoria Tahmasebi

Readings:
Leslie Regan Shade. 2014. “’Give Us Bread, But Give Us Roses’: Gender and Labour in the Digital Economy.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 10(2): 129-144.

Melissa Gira Grant. 2013. “Girl Geeks and Boy Kings.” Dissent 60(1): 46–49.

The economics of selling personal information
Friday, November 7, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Brett Caraway

Readings:
Stephen Lilley, Frances S. Grodzinsky, and Andra Gumbus. 2012. “Revealing the Commercialized and Compliant Facebook User.” Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society 10(2): 82-92.

V. Kumar and Bala Sundaram. 2012. “Lessons Learned from GM’s Pullback from Facebook Ads.” Forbes.com, June 18.

Alternatives and resistance?: Rethinking social media
Friday, November 21, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Brett Caraway

Readings:
Ariel Bleicher. 2011. “The Anti-Facebook.” IEEE Spectrum,June 2011: 54-83.

Manuel Castells. “Prelude to Revolution: Where it All Started.” 2012. In Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Wages For Facebook