Study Guides for Shedletsky and Aitken

Chapters 1 and 2

As you read these chapters work out answers to the following questions that will shape our class discussion:

What distinct modes of communication are encompassed in the internet? Email? Discussion groups? Chat rooms? Websites? Blogs? Instant messaging?
- Are there others?
- Which of these are similar enough we could think of them together?
- Make a list of features that makes each mode distinct.
What do we mean when we say "The internet is rhetorical?" When we say "The internet is a place for communication"?
- Answering these may require your exploring the definitions of the terms "rhetoric" and "communication."
- Make a list of the characteristics of the internet that allow us to discuss it as rhetorical. as a place for communication.
Compare oral literacy, written literacy, and computer literacy.
- Doing this comparison requires that you think about what is meant by each type of literacy. You may be helped by thinking about how religion or government changes when it is in a culture that has each type of literacy.
- Make a chart of differences.
- Make a list of the characteristics of computer literacy.
Does the internet alienate communication from people? disembody communication? With what effect?
- We often believe that the intense face to face quality of communication is important. Communication is best when we can see, fully respond to, those with whom we are communicating. Does the internet diminish this human connection quality? If so, with what effect?
- Do internet messages weaken the linkage between a source and a message? Between a source and his/her listener/audience?
Read the middle paragraph on p. 9 carefully. How does internet communication (remember their may be more than one mode) change the cues we attend to as we construct the meaning of messages?
- Make a list of the cues that are used to construct meaning on the internet?
- Is meaning as important in communication on the internet as it is in other message environments?
Read the case for discussion on p. 12. Where is power on the internet? Who controls the internet?
- How do your answers to these questions compare to your answers to similar questions about writing? Who controls print? Where is the power in print?
Shedletsky and Aitken write about the convergence of intrapersonal, interpersonal, public, and mass communication on the internet. Do the distinctions among these types of communication still make sense for describing communication on the internet
- You will need definitions of each of these types of communication.
- Be prepared with reasons for your answer.
What does it mean when Shedletsky and Aitken say "The Internet is a human activity"? (p. 21)
- What would some similar "activities" be?
- How does calling the internet a human activity change how we would study it?
Examine the chart on p. 25. Make a list of the ways the internet enhances communication. Make a list of the ways in which the internet diminishes communication.
- After completing your lists, think about what your lists say about what communication means.
- Now compare your list with Shedletsky and Aitken's list on p. 27. Which of their items would you delete? Defend the items you have added to their list with your list.
Study Shedletsky and Aitken's linear model of communication as information transfer on p. 28-29. Explain the various modes of communication you decided existed on the internet in the first question above in terms of the terminology of this model.
- There are other models of communication. For example, one model views communication not as a method of information transfer but as a method of understanding - giving meaning to things we encounter - through interaction with others. Do the same exercise with this alternative model of communication.

Chapter 3

Define "globalization."
- How does the internet contribute to globalization? How does it constrain globalization?
- Many in the world object to the diminished cultural diversity that results from the globalization of the mass media. In terms of globalization, is the internet one-way -- Western (US) to others? When was the last time you visited a website from another world culture?
What is "cyberspace"? In what sense is it a "space"?
- Make a list of the ways cyberspace differs from geographic space? Make a list of the ways cyberspace differs from "print space"? Make lists of ways communication differs in cyberspace, written space, and geographic space?
Review the chart on p. 39 and be able to define the various paradoxes. What dialectical paradoxes would you add to the list?
Define humanist research. Define behaviorist research.
- Develop a study you might do of the internet from a humanist perspective.
- Develop a study you might do of the internet from a behavioral perspective.
Does an ability to enter cyberspace give power to individuals?
- If so, does that power shift societal power with it?
- Does the internet empower men at the expense of women?
- Does it increase the differential of power between the wealthy and the less wealthy?
Make a list of ways that the internet is one-way communication. Make a list of ways the internet is two-way communication.
- What is a "push" technology? A "pull" technology? In what ways is the internet the former? the latter?
- If I am a voice of dissent (I believe that the war in Iraq was wrong; I believe that the globalization is ruining the environment by shifting industrial production to countries without controls on industrial waste), is the internet a great advantage to my achieving influence in the world or a disadvantage?

Chapter 4

There are concepts important to considering chapter 4 that Shedletsky and Aitken do not introduce. First, is the difference between information and framing.

Information	Framing
Information is built by reducing things we know to facts -- isolatable pieces of knowledge that can be conveyed and memorized.	Framing is built by putting facts together into a new or old way of thinking about a subject. Thus, framing takes a piece of information and reinterprets it by relating it to other facts.
Information is measured in bits.	Framing is understood as different frames for information
Information is ultimately analytical: that is, we reduce complexity to single, isolated facts that we can present through communication.	Framing is ultimately synthetic: that is, we take a set of facts and give them a relationship to each other by tying them together with the frame.
The power of communication with relationship to information is the power to pass the information from one person to another.	The power of communication with relationship to framing is the power to alter or reinforce a framework within which facts are interpreted.
Example: How many people of color are there in the United States?	Example: Should we be asking questions about race in a census? Aren't there more significant ways in which our people differ than race? Doesn't the question assume that there are people without color? Thus, isn't it whitist?
A search engine responds to the cyberworld as information, focusing on particular words and phrases.	How do we gather different frames from the internet?

This chapter does not show full awareness of this distinction, and it is an important one.

Are either information or framing dominant on the internet?
Does the internet have structures that privilege information? that privilege framing?

Second, I think you need to think of this chapter as developing an example more than as about a "function" itself. To help set that up:

Make a list of the kinds of information you rely on the internet for.
Make a list of kinds of information for which you still rely on print.

Review this website that teaches how to evaluate websites. Be prepared to evaluate the advice on that website.

What advice seems to you faulty?
What advice is missing?
What assumptions does the site make about what makes information reliable?

Go to the UM Library website. Find "Communication and Media Complete," a data base of research in communication. Use the website to find the following:

Locate an article by Sonia Livingstone on Media Literacy.
Locate an article in Media Week entitled "Politicians Log On"
Describe how a resource such as this alters your use of the library.

Take a look at "Undergraduate Library Services in the 21st Century." Read at least the Executive Summary and as much else as you wish.

Where was the Task Force right? Where wrong?
Evaluate the Library's achievement of the report's vision.

Bring in the URL of your favorite search engines.

Why do you like this search engine?
How does it differ from GOOGLE?

Chapter 5

List the uses of the internet that you consider "entertaining."
Look at the definition of "internet play" on p. 74. Do you have recommendations for altering it?
Do you believe that the internet is inherently playful? Explain why or why not.
Review the chart on p. 77. Do you believe the internet intensifies experiences as indicated here?
Examine pp. 82-83. Now design a set of rules for the use of the class website. Place them on your server and bring the URL to class.

Return to the COMM 498i home page

Chapter 6

Bring in a copy of a flame that you have encountered in an email or in a listserv you belong to.
Make a list of the lines along which the digital divide separates.
Visit the following websites. What strategies do these websites use to unite their adherents? What strategies do they use to divide people?
Review the chart on pp.104-105. List additional metaphors you have encountered on the web.

Chapter 7

Define intrapersonal communication. How is it different from thinking? Describe a moment when you engaged in intrapersonal communication (that you can discuss in class).
What is "voice"? "tone"? "intention"? How often when you are reading email messages or visiting websites do you take these into consideration?
Make a list of rules that you use to decode a website. What questions do you seek to answer that influence how you interpret websites?
Make a list of rules that you use to decode email messages. What questions do you seek to answer that shape your development of meaning in the messages?
When you are using the internet (websites) do you think of yourself engaged in communication with another person? If not, how do you think about the communication?

Chapter 8

When did you last meet someone new on line? How does the internet change the way you meet people for the first time? Be prepared to provide a narrative of one recent encounter.
How does the internet change your relationship with friends that you meet occasionally (such as old high school friends)? What role does the internet play in such relationships? Be prepared to provide a narrative of one such relationship.
How does the internet influence your relationship with your best friend or life partner? In what ways is the relationship weaker? Stronger?
Do you know anyone whose facility in face to face human relationships is eroded by his/her interaction with the internet? Be prepared to explain how.
Do you know anyone whose facility for face to face human relationships is enhanced by the internet? Be prepared to explain how.
Review Table 8.1. Are there elements you would add to the table?

Chapter 9

Drawing on your study of websites of organizations and your reading in the book, think through the following:

What are some of the functions which organizations and groups perform on their websites?
Prepare a list of the kind of internet functionalities that groups can sponsor and how they relate to developing group communication.
Make a list of rules that you would use in managing a listserv.

Chapter 12

Make a list of the five most significant implications you think the internet has on the way we view communication
Make a list of the five most significant ways our knowledge of communication informs an understanding of the internet as a communication medium
How has commercialization influenced the internet as a communication medium
Shedletsky and Aitken call the internet "a more humane medium" than various forms of mass communication. Do you agree? Why or why not?