Class Notes for Sociology of Communications, Fall 2005

Grading formulas:

Assignments and Quizzes =  ([Enrolling]+[Penguin Chapters 1 to 5]+[My Yahoo Page]+[Personal Home Page]+[Global Brain & the Future]+[Writing Ch 26 27]+[American Values]+[Outline for Hyperlink Essay]*2+[Essay Posted]*3+[DiscussionList]+[Historical Trends]*2+[Library Assignment]*2+[Literature Review & References]*3+[McLuhan, Turning Points and Politics]+[Triumph of the Nerds]+[Data Fair]+[Final Gathering])/24

Total Score = [Attendance]*0.1+[Assignments & Quizzes]*0.2+[Midterm Essay]*0.1+[Midterm Objective]*0.15+[Five Paragraph Essay]*0.1+[Research Paper]*0.2+[Research Presentations]*0.15


December 7:  To practice public speeching, we will listen to some great speeches, then try to read them ourselves imitating the original speakers.  The texts are at:   JFK Inaugural Address  - Martin Luther King "I have a Dream" speech-Winston Churchill's Battle of Britain speech.  (These are available online  History Channel or other sites).   Shakespeare:  To Be or Not to Be.  Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. 

December 5:  We worked in the lab on our presentations.

November 30:   We will work on preparing presentations in Word, which is easier than Powerpoint. 
You can begin with your research paper and select three graphs, charts or tables to present to the class.  Make sure these are corrected if I indicated that they weren't done correctly when I reviewed the paper.  You then write three bullet points to describe the main point in the table or graph and put them on the page. Just put each table or chart on the top of a page, with the bullet points below it.  The key step here is to make sure your graphs or charts are good and that you have three good points to make about each one. 

If you pasted Microcase graphs into Word, there may be a lot of empty space around them.  You can open the "picture" toolbar in Word and use the "crop" tool to cut out this space.  Excel graphics generally look better.  These should be graphs or tables that you create yourself, not ones copied from another source (which I did allow in the Research Paper to supplement your own work - there is nothing wrong with incorporating the work of others in a research paper as long as it is credited).

Do not try to incorporate all the text you wrote in your paper into the presentation.  In a presentation, you show only the graphics and an outline of key points.  The text is used as the bases for your oral remarks.

To prepare a presentation in Word, don't fill more than half a page at a time, so that it can all be viewed at once.  You won't be able to animate the bullet points. A sample presentation in Word is available.   If you wish to do Powerpoint, a sample powerpoint presentation is available that you can use as a template.   If you open it in Explorer, you will need to save it to disk and open it in PowerPoint to be able to edit it.  You can then  just replace the graphs and text with your own material, saving as much of the formatting as you wish to use.


November 28.  We will discuss creating presentations in Powerpoint and with other media.    Powerpoint logic.  Sontag on photographs.    Gettysburg Address in Powerpoint.  Breaking Up by Powerpoint. There's Something About South Jersey.  Trends in Camden:  www.invinciblecities.com.   Making Powerpoint Presentations.   Powerpoint Tips.  PowerPoint Tips and Tricks - includes a History of Powerpoint. 

Earlier in the semester we viewed The Purdue University Writing Labs powerpoints covering:  Finding Your Focus: The Writing Process   Organizing your Argument.  Organizing Your Argument is especially relevant here.

November 18 -  We attended the Beyond the Post-Industrial City presentation. 

November 14 and 16 -  Viewing of Triumph of the Nerds.  Here is a brief review from a reader on Amazon.
Sociopaths, egomaniacs, hippies and nerds., September 19, 2000
Reviewer: Joseph Ekaitis "author of 'Collinsfort Village'" (Rialto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)  
And we have THEM to thank for all of this.

Your humble author can't help but wonder how Bob Cringely got the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Paul Allen and others in front of the cameras for an honest look inside the slightly twisted minds that begat the personal computer.

At 3 hours in length, "Triumph of the Nerds" isn't just a PBS miniseries. On home video, it becomes an epic. And why shouldn't it be? The personal computer has an impact on our lives equal to that of the light bulb and the automobile. But in the case of the PC, most of the people responsible for its creation and worldwide influence are still alive. These are flesh and blood humans, not fading historical sketches like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.

"Triumph of the Nerds" was originally produced as a 20-year retrospective on the personal computer. But the PC will be 25 years old in the year 2000. I can't wait to see Bob Cringely's follow up.

November 7 -  Political Communication.  We'll discuss chapters 8, 9 and 10 in Taking Sides.  You can find chapter summaries online.  Also, students in this class last semester wrote essays on these chapters that are still available on the WEB sites (in most cases at least).  Their powerpoints on the essays are in WEBCT.  In our discussion today, we can look at the current gubernatorial election in New Jersey.  Here are some links.  Wikipedia -  NJ.com    Corzine for Governor  - doug.com -  Rasmussen Reports - Marist Poll -  Jewish Press Editorial citing NY Times Editorial - South Jersey Last Battlefield - Independent Candidates - Millionaires Fight Dirty -  Latest Forrester Ad Quoting Corzine's Wife -

Here's a NY Times Story on attack ads in the NJ campaign:

October 29, 2005

Attack Ads Continue, to New Jersey's Dismay

By DAVID W. CHEN and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

TRENTON, Oct. 28 - One commercial shows a gallery of disgraced or imprisoned public officials spinning on a roulette wheel around a picture of Senator Jon S. Corzine, with the words "Now in Prison" and "Pay-Off" stamped onto the screen.

Another ad features a young quadriplegic man in a wheelchair. "Doug Forrester doesn't support embryonic stem cell research," he says, looking directly at viewers, "therefore, I don't think he supports people like me."

As the race for New Jersey governor enters its final 10 days, the two candidates, both wealthy, have spent an unprecedented tens of millions of dollars on television and radio advertising, much of it attacking each other and, according to polls, turning off voters in the process. And more of those commercials are on the way.

"I think this is just bombardment after bombardment after bombardment," said Edward J. Rollins Jr., a Republican political consultant who knows a thing or two about tough campaigns and has seen most of the ads. "The reality is that people have gotten to the point where they're so oversaturated."

The candidates spent $17 million in just the last three weeks, according to their most recent campaign reports, nearly all of it their own money. Over all, the two men have spent $46 million since the June 7 primary, with Mr. Corzine, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, at $29 million, and Douglas R. Forrester, the founder of a prescription benefits company, at $17 million.

The New York Times Poll recently found that 32 percent of voters said each candidate was attacking the other unfairly. Other recent polls have made similar findings.

The race contrasts sharply with the campaign for mayor in New York City, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, leading by more than 20 percentage points, according to recent polls, has spent nearly $30 million on upbeat advertising.

But in New Jersey, Mr. Corzine leads by only single digits, and with many voters still undecided, the two campaigns are taking no chances.

"Unfortunately, races seem to get more negative every year," said former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who appeared in a positive ad for Mr. Forrester. "I think the public is sick of it. People respond to positive campaigns," he added.

Loretta Anderson, 67, a Democrat from Ocean City who was interviewed after the Times Poll was completed, complained that the race was "the same old rehash."

"No one is saying what they will do," Mrs. Anderson said.

But she said one ad by the Corzine campaign spotlighting Mr. Forrester's support for President Bush changed her mind about which candidate she would support. "I'm voting for Corzine because Forrester is aligned with Bush," said Mrs. Anderson, a retired insurance administrator.

In random interviews with about two dozen voters, nearly all said the candidates should spend less time attacking each other.

Not that the campaign has been devoid of positive commercials. For the Democrats, the most memorable one showed former President Bill Clinton raving about Mr. Corzine's leadership abilities. For the Republicans, one featured Andrea Forrester, Mr. Forrester's wife, talking about the virtues of her husband.

But even the ad with Mrs. Forrester elicited some cynical reactions from voters.

"At first, I liked it, family values and all," said Lisa Mermelstein, a software writer from Hoboken. "But after all the negativity from all of his other ads, I started to think that it was creating a picture that wasn't telling the truth. Now I think that it was too Dan Quayle for me."

But positive ads have been the exception. In two ads featuring the roulette wheel of disgraced or imprisoned officials, Mr. Forrester attacks a woman, a union leader with whom Mr. Corzine was romantically linked; in others, he links Mr. Corzine with former Gov. James E. McGreevey. Mr. Corzine has approved ads linking Mr. Forrester to President Bush, and another attacking Mr. Forrester's prescription benefits firm, BeneCard Services, with the words "Sued for Fraud" on the screen.

The stem-cell research ad from Mr. Corzine, featuring Carl Riccio, a 19-year-old Villanova student who is a quadriplegic, drew the ire on Thursday of the Jersey Guys, a popular radio pair on WKXW-FM, known as New Jersey 101.5.

"It's almost like, 'If you vote for Jon Corzine, I'll walk again, but if you vote for Doug Forrester, I'll be locked in a wheelchair for life,' " said Craig Carton, one of the hosts, in an interview on Friday. "My thing was, Do you need to put a paralyzed child on TV to win an election? What's next? Are we going to start putting on mentally ill people? The guy with one leg?"

Both campaigns say they do not like the tone of the advertising. In an interview this week, Mr. Corzine said: "It's just awful. Whoever wins, after all this junk flying around, the first thing they're going to have to do is try to restore people's faith in government."

But both candidates were not exactly surprised by the negative advertising, either. Mr. Corzine hired a team of veteran Democratic media consultants who have worked on - and won - the last few statewide races in New Jersey. And Mr. Forrester sought out Greg Stevens, whose firm created the Swift boat ads that damaged Senator John Kerry last year in the presidential race.

Over all, the primaries included, the two candidates have spent $62 million. And though voters and politicians may insist that they do not like all of that money, and all of the tough ads, there are reasons the strategy works, said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at M.I.T. and co-author of "Going Negative."

He said that while independent voters become so turned off by the mudslinging, party loyalists tend to be energized by negative campaigns.

"The irony is that these are the voters who already have their minds made up, so they see what they want to see in the ads," he said.

Marina Stefan contributed reporting for this article.

November 4 - working in lab on literature reviews.

November 2 Theories of Marshall McLuhan.  Reading Assignment:  Understanding McLuhan  Notes on McLuhan. 
October 31. 
Abstract - one paragraph summary
Introduction - identifies the problem, reviews previous research, state the "hypothesis"
Methods section -
Results -
Discussion -
We will discuss the organization of research reports.  Our model is the sample paper on Body Objectification in the Penguin Manual, chapter 23.  It comes with audio commentary on the web site for the textbook.  We will modify this model for our purposes since we are doing secondary analysis of survey data.  We do not need to say nearly as much as this author does about methodology.  Most of our data will be presented in graphs done with the Historical Trends software, although you are welcome to incorporate other kinds of tables and charts you have learned about in Methods of Research.  Fulano de Tal has prepared a sample paper for us which is available on his WEB site.  You have to open it in Word.

October 26.  Discussion of trend analysis, including an essay "September 11, 2001:  A Turning Point for America's Future"  also available in powerpoint format.  We also discussed materials from  http://www.futureswatch.org/, including the Trends Timeline chart available there in flash format. 

October 24 - discussion of the library assignment. 

October 21 - we worked in the lab on trend analysis.

October 19 - Trend Analysis using Microcase.  This software is available in the computer centers on campus, or you can download it from the readings and software folder on our WEBCT.

October 17.  Midterm to be taken with WEBCT in BSB 108.   There will be two quizzes in WEBCT - one will be multiple choice and short answer and will be graded automatically.  The other will be essay format and will require rewriting some sentences.  The test will be closed book and you will have only one try on each quiz.  Some of the questions will be taken from quizzes we have done as assignments.
    Readings to be covered will include:
       Chapter 8 in Towards a Global Brain. and Methods and Approaches of Future Studies. 
      Part I in Taking Sides (Issues 1, 2, 3, 4)
      Penguin Handbook Chapters 1 to 5,  8 (7 in the first edition), 26, 27, 28, 29

October 14.   Chat room review for midterm -  this will be held in 117 BSB to permit verbal as well as online discussion, but you may log on from home if you wish. 

October 12   Presentation and discussion of more hyperlink essays.  Everyone should be prepared to be called on.  This means you should bring a printed copy of your essay.  You can also update the online version of the essay. 

October 10.  Presentation of hyperlink essays:  Colleen Redman, Shareda Coleman,    Jenny Popov, Rodney Washington, Kimberly Yumul.  Volunteers.  These essays should be acessable frm our home pages on the photo directory page.  Those  whose essays are not accessible or does not work properly should come by my office this afternoon for help or get it up themselves by 5 p.m. today:  Anthony Manello (no link to essay), Christie Henning (link does not work), Steven Sooy (paper not posted), David Wilson (links to news sources are to your hard drive not to the WEB site). 

October 7:  Meet in BSB 117 to publish our hyperlink essays.  Instructions for publishing essays are in Publishing Essay Files. 

October 5:  Discussion of chapters 28 and 29 in the Penguin manual.  In-class writing exercise using a powerpoint available here. 

Oct 3:  discussion of writing essays based on our outlines.  Materials discussed  "Growing Up in the Peanut Gallery" and  Red Sluts, Blue Sluts  and Tropes on TV. 

September 30:  a lab class devoted to finishing up the outlines, most have been distributed?

September 28:  We discussed outlines submitted by several students.  These are not posted.

September 26:  We discussed organizing our five paragraph essays, using an Essay Form that was distributed.  I did an example with the form on the board, and then did a sample outline on Growing Up in the Peanut Gallery.  The one I typed in class was as follows:

Title: "Growing Up in the Peanut Gallery"
by Ted Goertzel
  1. Introductory Paragraph
    1. Motivator: First generation to grow up with TV, what did it do to us
    2. Subtopic One:    A white bread, racially homogeneous, middle class world.
    3. Subtopic Two:     Individualis or collectivism?
    4. Subtopic Three:     Traditional Gender Roles
    5. Transition to next paragraph:   These topics are illustrated by three television shows...
  2. First Supporting Paragraph
    1. Restate subtopic one in different words:   Howdy Doody was a mass TV show with a puppet, etc.
    2. First Supporting Detail or Example:    It was a homogeneous bunch of kids, a red haired pupper with freckles
    3. Second Supporting Detail or Example:  It seemed a conformist ethos, the kids just watched and were entertained
    4. Third Supporting Detail or Example:   Girls and women had only subordinate roles
    5. Transition:     This was for little k ids, a few years later we were watching the MMC
  3. Second Supporting Paragraph
    1. Restate subtopic two in different words:  MMC, first Disney mass TV show for kids, had an ongoing cast of children
    2. First Supporting Detail or Example    Very white middle class:
    3. Second Supporting Detail or Example:  More individualism is coming through in that the young people on it were real characters we could identify with.
    4. Third Supporting Detail or Example:   Girls were striving to be attractive and cheerful, no discussion of careers.
    5. Transition:   This may have been more for girls, boy watched Westerns...
  4. Third Supporting Paragraph
    1. Restate subtopic three in different words:   The Lone Ranger was a character who appealed to boys, fitting into the genre of the Western
    2. First Supporting Detail or Example:  He was white, Tonto was a stereotypical sidekick.  The scenes were frontier small towns, socially homogeneous
    3. Second Supporting Detail or Example  This is a strongly individualisti theme, the man on the white horse who saves people the system has failed:
    4. Third Supporting Detail or Example    Women are totally in traditional and p eripheral roles.:
    5. Transition:    We have had three somewhat different shows, perhaps reflecting different age groups in the audience or some development of the medium over time.
  5. Closing or Summary Paragraph
    1. Synthesis of Main Topic in Different Words:  The examples are all traditional in sex roles and in class homogeneity, but they vary in terms of individualism
    2. Synthesis of Subtopic One:  all the same except for Tonto
    3. Synthesis of Subtopic Two:  HD was conformist, group oriented, MMC had personalities, LR is an individualist crusader
    4. Synthesis of Subtopic Three:   Traditional all the way through
    5. Final Concluding Statement:  TV did not anticipate change, it was purely entertainment, had strong male leading figures. 


September 23:  We had an online "chat room" class.  The Transcript is online. 

Sept 21:  Discussion of other issues in Part I of Taking Sides:  Television Violence, Body Images, Racial Stereotypes.  There are PowerPoints on these topics in our WEBCT. 

Sept 19:  We will view a PowerPoint on "Are American Values Shaped by the Mass Media"  The PowerPoint is in our class WEBCT.  We will then talk about organizing an essay on how American Values have shaped our values.  Some other readings:  Evangelical TV.    Blogs in Philadelphia.  Blinq:  Blogs Philly.com 

Sept 16:  we will meet in BSB 117 to work on personal WEB pages.   Some pointers:
  1. If you want to use Mozilla Composer, which I recommend, you need to download the full Mozilla Suite not just Mozilla Firefox which is only a Browser or Mozilla Thunderbird which is just a mail server.  The Mozilla Suite has everything, including the Composer. You can find these products at: http://www.mozilla.org/products/    You need the Mozilla Suite which includes "HTML editing made simple." 
  2. An alternative is to prepare your page in Word or WordPerfect or another word processor.  In this case, you need to save the file as a web page, in *.html format, not in *.doc or another format.  If you do this, you may have more problems, but it does work.
  3. The "student homepage" feature in WEBCT doesn't work for our purposes.  we need to post them on clam.  I took that link off our WEBCT homepage.
  4. The trick to publishing is to read the instructions very carefully and follow them precisely. 
  5. You may find it convenient to purchase a USB memory stick or flash drive for this course.  According to a sign on the desk our library sells small ones (64 mb I believe) for only $15.   That way you can keep all your files in one place and use them both at home and in the labs.  You can also use it to download papers in the library and for other things.  You can also get larger ones from computer stores, amazon.com, etc.  You need a computer with a USB port.  You could also keep your whole web site on one floppy disk if you don't get into video or large files.
Sept 14:  Discussion of the first five chapters of the Penguin Manual.  Some key points:
Sept 12:  we used the My Yahoo pages as a way of introducing each other, then discussed to how prepare personal WEB pages.  The sample web page we did (for "Martha Stewart") is available.  (I mistakenly put .html twice at the end of this file, you should not do that:  Composer automatically adds the file extension.)

Sept 9:  we met in the computer lab, BSB 117 to work on My Yahoo pages and other things.

Sept 7.  We will begin with an overview of methods of studying the future.  Each of these usually ends with a written product, they can be thought of as outlines for a paper.  The methods considered are:  trend analysis, cyclical pattern analysis, environmental scanning, scenario writing, backcasting, visioning and technological forecasting.  Futurist research is difficult to evaluate, and often use more than one method.  They can consider:  possible futures, probable futures, preferable futures and preventable futures. We look for reports that are well written, complete, seem to consider all reasonable alternatives.  Today we will view a video called The Global Brain which is a classic visioning exercise, first published as a book in 1983.  Many of the things envisioned in this movie may have already come true...

September 2.  We went over the syllabus and organization of the course and took class photos.  Anyone who wishes to send me a different photo (as a digital file) can email it to goertzel@camden.rutgers.edu.  If you have a paper photograph you wish to use, scan it and send me the file in jpg format, or bring it to class and I can scan it.
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