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Project Ideas
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last edited
by Chris Werry 7 months, 1 week ago
Project Ideas 2023: A.I., Writing, Rhetoric and Education
- Writing About A.I., Rhetoric, and Education: if you are interested in developing a proposal and final paper that examines large language models and artificial
intelligence, you may find this list of potential topics useful. Note that you can revise or adapt them. If you come up with interesting projects topics, or
research questions of your own, please add them to this list. I will be adding more over the course of the semester.
Proposal Assignment and Final Papers - Options and Ideas
Sample Student Proposal Papers
Sample Student Final Papers
Books, Videos, Documentaries and Articles for Review
Places to Publish/Share Your Writing
I would like you to consider engaging in "public thinking," or writing for an audience beyond this class. That audience might be your classmates,
yourself, an online community, or people outside the classroom. You may want to consider sites such as this:
- CODEBREAKER, a journal that showcases undergraduate writing at SDSU. I'm currently editing the journal and looking for student submissions.
- Sites like Medium.com, which allow all kinds of people to share and publish their work, and find communities of like minded writers. Medium enables
readers to comment on and annotate articles, follow writers and annotators, and reply to comments/annotations. Many of the authors we are reading have
Medium pages. For example, here is Clive Thompson's Medium postings. Another person we are reading is Dana Boyd, who has a page on Medium.
You can see all the articles she has written and also the notes she has made, and you can follow both.
- The new wikisummaries project. This site allows people to publish reviews nd summaries of texts.
- An online community of interest.
Additional Project Resources
Organizations
- Data and Society. A very useful organization that publishes important new work on digital culture, politics and technology. Many of the scholars we have
read are affiliated with this organization.
- Harvard's Nieman Lab is useful repository of research on new media and journalism
Repositories of Data for Analysis
- A collection of fake news sites from the Daily Dot (check the links still work) a list from Benedictin Universty, and the Snopes Junk News List
(this is updated every day, but you should be able to look back in time).
- A new Russian propaganda effort called "USA Really. Wake Up America" (background on it is here). The USA Really. Wake Up America web site.
- Fake news about George Soros. A fake news site called DCLeaks has much material on him. DCLeaks was taken down, but you can
find it on archive.org. Eg https://archive.fo/GNHXv
- Veterans Today is suspected of being backed by Russian and possibly Iranian propaganda, https://www.veteranstoday.com/
- A twitter account named TIMENOUT that the bomb suspect followed. It is a fairly popular account, with around 250,000 listed followers. What are the
main themes? What do you notice about the rhetoric? Can you identify connections to Roberts Miller's ideas about demagoguery?
- An archive of tweets by the Florida Bomb Suspect Cesar Altieri.
- Archive of messages on Gab by Robert Bowers who is accused of attacking a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
- Story on a new Russian site for fake news set up for the election. It has evaded YouTube's detection system with "Buzzfeed-stye knock-offs"
- This NYT story examines sites spreading fake news and fake images related to the migrant Caravan
- House Intelligence Collection of Facebook Ads During 2016 Election by Russian Propaganda Teams
- Sample Facebook Ads from the 2016 Election Organized by Group (fake liberal, fake conservative, fake Muslim, fake BLM, etc.)
- A collection of one year's worth of chat room logs from the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker's Party.
- The BlackmattersUS site, one of the few remaining web sites created by Russian operatives during the 2016 election.
New materials stopped appearing there in mid-2017, but you can find a lot to analyze. You could also use archive.org to loook at how it changed over time.
- 50 Fake Facebook Ads from the Election (Newsweek)
Fake and/or Extremist Sites for Analysis
- Natural News http://www.naturalnews.com/ and http://www.naturalnews.com/About.html.
“Fluoride and Why You Need to Avoid It.” By Tru Foods Nutrition, Natural News Blogs, August 14, 2017.
http://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/fluoride-and-why-you-need-to-avoid-it/
- Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Putin is Taking a Bold Step against Biotech Giant Monsanto
http://www.globalresearch.ca/putin-is-taking-a-bold-step-against-biotech-giant-monsanto/5526691
Let’s Save the World – Trump Must Go! http://www.globalresearch.ca/lets-save-the-world-trump-must-go/5603920
- Veterans Today http://www.veteranstoday.com/
"Busted: Idlib Gas Attack Fakers Murder 68 Kids in Bus Slaughter" http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/04/17/busted-idlib-gas-attack-fakers-murder-68-kids-in-bus-slaughter/
"US Produced Sarin Gas Used in Syria" http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/04/08/296525
- Infowars, https://www.infowars.com/
"Elite Stage Race War to Enslave America" https://www.infowars.com/exclusive-elite-stage-race-war-to-enslave-america/
Antifa Creates Violence To Provoke Alt-Right Into Aggressive Reaction
https://www.infowars.com/antifa-creates-violence-to-provoke-alt-right-into-aggressive-reaction/
Fake Sites with Debunking Guide
These fake sites can be used for analysis. They come with model "debunkings."
- Army Sniper Takes Out Neighbor’s Home Intruder From Bedroom Window. Here is how the story was debunked
- Over 30,000 scientists say 'Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming' is a complete hoax and science lie. Here is how it was debunked. For Revkin's comments
(and similar sites) see this site.
- Check the "about" link at bottom of global warming story page. http://www.naturalnews.com/About.html It says, "Website Affiliations. Natural News stories
are frequently copied and posted by other alternative news organizations, including Infowars.com, DailyPaul.com and a variety of other sites spanning subjects
as diverse as the environment, liberty, self-sufficiency and vaccines." The fact that Infowars is a major distributor of the site is a red flag.
The Politics of Algorithms
- Algorithmic Accountability: A Primer. By Robyn Caplan, Joan Donovan, Lauren Hanson, and Jeanna Matthews. A Data and Society report.
- Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Safiya Umoja Noble.
- Dana Boyd, "Your Data is Being Manipulated." Keynote at the 2017 Strata Data Conference in NYC. The talk is about search, the politics of algorithms, hacking and AI.
- A three minute introduction to Noble's research, and her book Algorithms of Oppression. From USC TV. Long video talk by Noble at a Data and Society event,
and one at USC
- Tarleton Gillespie "The Relevance of Algorithms" plus a summary of Noble's work (both texts connect in interesting ways with Winner)
- Julia Angwin's page at the Data and Society group. Angwin is an influential writer and research on the topic.
- "Watch out, algorithms: Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson unveil The Markup, their plan for investigating tech’s societal impacts" A Nieman Lab article about
- Anwin and Larson's work. (Harvard's Nieman Lab is useful repository of research on new media and journalism.)
- Video: What Algorithms Taught Me About Forgiveness. Julia Angwin at MozFest
- "Make Algorithms Accountable." A new York Times op-ed by Julia Angwin
- "Machine Bias." A Pro Publica article about algorithms used in criminal sentencing.
- Sacasas, "Resisting the Habits of he Algorithmic Mind"
Facebook
Propaganda, Disinformation and Demagoguery
Fake News
Advertising
Social Media, Addictive Design, Impacts on Kids
- The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected. NyTimes. "America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even
offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether....psychologist Richard Freed...worries especially about how the psychologists who
work for these companies make the tools phenomenally addictive, as many are well-versed in the field of persuasive design (or how to influence human
behavior through the screen).
- A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley. “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones.”
"The people who are closest to a thing are often the most wary of it. Technologists know how phones really work, and many have decided
they don’t want their own children anywhere near them. A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens
as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high.
- Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, said earlier this year that he would not let his nephew join social networks. Bill Gates banned cellphones until his children were teenagers, and
Melinda Gates wrote that she wished they had waited even longer. Steve Jobs would not let his young children near iPads...in the last year, a fleet of high-profile Silicon
Valley defectors have been sounding alarms in increasingly dire terms about what these gadgets do to the human brain. Suddenly rank-and-file Silicon Valley workers
are obsessed. No-tech homes are cropping up across the region.Nannies are being asked to sign no-phone contracts.
Project Ideas
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