Comm 620: Mobile Phones, On-Line Community, and Social Change, a year-long biweekly multidisciplinary research seminar
Instructors:
François Bar (Communication),
Steve Anderson (Cinematic Arts)
Murali Annavaram (Viterbi School of Engineering)
This seminar explores how mobile phones can serve to build on-line community, even among people who are mostly off-line. It runs in parallel with “Mobile Voices”, an academic-community partnership project to research and design a platform allowing low-wage immigrants in Los Angeles to publish stories about their lives and their communities directly from their mobile phones. The seminar provides a venue where researchers can explore the social, theoretical and technical issues raised by Mobile Voices. Students will engage in year-long research projects, individually or in groups, structured to culminate in publication by the end of the year. Some of these projects will directly be part of Mobile Voices, but there will be room for other research projects exploring the role of mobile phones in fostering community and/or social change.
Information about Mobile Voices can be found at https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/VozMob and a syllabus-in-progress for the class at https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/VozMobClass
The seminar is open to graduate students from any department. The exact content is intentionally left flexible to allow adaptation to participants’ interests. The class will meet every other Wednesday, 2:00pm-4:50pm, in Kerckhoff Hall (1st floor). If you are interested, please plan to join our first meeting on Wednesday September 3rd at 2pm.
Participation requires consent of one of the instructors. Students can then choose to register for Comm620 (4 units per semester), sign up for 1-4 units of independent study with any of the three instructors, or audit the class.
Contact François Bar: fbar AT usc.edu
