Courses

One of the courses I will be teaching this fall in the American University School of Communication is a graduate seminar on Global Internet Policy and Society.  The draft syllabus follows:

Fall 2011 Syllabus

GLOBAL INTERNET POLICY AND SOCIETY

Dr. Laura DeNardis

Course Overview

Global Internet Policy and Society examines the public interest battles occurring at various Internet points of control and the implications of these battles for individual freedom, innovation and democratic culture. Internet governance is enacted not only by traditional governments but through a variety of policy mechanisms including technical design decisions, social norms, private industry policies, global institutional frameworks and international treaties. Students taking this course will be able to identify the major historical and contemporary policy dilemmas posed by the Internet and new media, understanding what is at stake in each context and identifying the major interests and values at play.  Students will have the opportunity to stake out their own positions on each issue and gain a solid understanding of the technical architecture ultimately underlying each policy area. The course begins with a discussion about four recent Internet controversies and what they tell us about Internet points of control and governance.  These recent controversies include: Internet ‘three strikes” laws, Egyptian Internet outages, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog saga, and WikiLeaks infrastructure battles.  These examples will help students understand many of the overall policy dilemmas and open questions posed by the Internet. Section II of the course – Content – addresses how the Internet and new information technologies have expanded opportunities for freedom of expression around the globe but have also created unprecedented challenges for individual privacy, reputation, and the protection of intellectual property rights. Section III – Code – examines core issues of Internet governance including: the Domain Name System (DNS) and Internet addresses; the politics of Internet technical design; contemporary cybersecurity issues; and the policy role of search engines and other information intermediaries. Section IV – Infrastructure – examines infrastructure policy issues such as digital inequality and broadband access policies; network neutrality; and the rise of filtering and blocking regimes. Finally, the course examines policy prospects – through technology, private industry, and governmental action – for the future of the Internet. Students will leave this course with a sharp Internet policy background necessary for taking a leadership position in public service, academia, or Internet and media industries in the 21st century.

Course Requirements

Students will succeed in mastering this course if they thoughtfully read all required material prior to each course meeting and if they are fully engaged in online and in-class discussions. Each student will submit four brief online thought pieces on the readings and produce an original final paper. Grades will be calculated as follows:

Four Online Thought Pieces (20%)

Once per month (September, October, November, December), each student will post a short thought piece reacting to one of the readings or to a course discussion question. Each post should be 500 words and must be submitted by Sunday night (midnight) prior to class.

Course Participation (25%)

Students are expected to attend every class, offering critiques of readings, actively participating in debates about each subject, asking critical questions, and exhibiting intellectual engagement in the course subject matter and discussions. The course only meets once per week so unexcused absences will reflect poorly on overall grades. A student’s course participation grade will be lowered by one full grade for every unexcused absence, including arriving late for class or leaving early without prior notification and approval.

In-Class Presentation (20%)

Each student will give one presentation on selected course readings during the semester.  The presenting student will summarize and critique the selected reading and present salient discussion questions. Students are especially encouraged to share an additional source they find on the subject, such as a policy brief by a think tank, a corporate press release, an online video, cultural material such as artwork, an op/ed, or governmental source such as a legislative proposal, law, or judicial ruling.

Final Paper (35%)

Each student will produce a 3000-word paper on a topic related to a contemporary or historical problem in global Internet policy.  Paper topics must be approved in advance by the professor. Examples of possible topics include:

  • Domain name system copyright filtering
  • Social networking privacy policies
  • Search engine law
  • Online reputation economies
  • Internet blacklists
  • New business models for journalism
  • Net neutrality
  • The use of deep packet inspection by Internet service providers
  • National broadband policies
  • Online defamation and harassment
  • Internet access as a human right
  • Censorship circumvention technologies
  • The great firewall of China
  • The Google book settlement
  • Internet ‘kill switches’
  • Locational privacy (e.g. GPS, cell phone tracking, Google street view)
  • Civil liberties implications of online advertising
  • Cyberterrorism or cyberwarfare
  • Infrastructures of free expression
  • The politics of denial of service attacks
  • Censorship and filtering regimes
  • IPv6, Internet address scarcity, Internet exchange markets
  • Social implications of ACTA – the plurilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
  • South Korea’s ban on anonymous Internet postings

The following deadlines are intended to help students produce a polished and well-organized final paper:

  1. A two-paragraph description of the paper topic, including main research and policy questions to be addressed, due on Tuesday, September 27 at midnight.
  2. A paper outline of at least 1000 words laying out the sections and organization of the paper and articulating an overall thesis or policy position, due on Tuesday, November 22 at midnight.
  3. A final paper of 3000 words (including any citations and endnotes), due on Friday, December 16 at midnight. No late papers will be accepted.

Course Schedule and Required Reading

Section I: Introduction to Internet Architecture and Governance

Class 1. Course Overview and Introductions (August 30)

Introductions; course requirements; overview of Internet policy and governance; some fundamentals of Internet architecture; discussion of four recent global Internet policy controversies.

Class 2. Internet Control Origins (September 6)

  • Larry Lessig, Code 2.0, Perseus Books, 2006, Read Chapters 1, 3 and 4.
  • Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World, Oxford University Press 2006. Read Chapter 5 “How Governments Rule the Net.”
  • Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics,” in The Whale and the Reactor: The Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Section II: Content

Class 3. Intellectual Property Rights and the Internet (September 13)

  • Larry Lessig, Code 2.0, Perseus Books, 2006, Chapter 10 “Intellectual Property.”

Class 4. The Privatization of Online Privacy (September 20)

  • Jonathan Zittrain, “Privacy 2.0” in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, Yale University Press 2008. Read pages 200-216 only.

 Class 5. Reputation Economies in Cyberspace (September 27)

Class. 6. The Internet and Political Action (October 4)

Section III. Code

Class 7. The Domain Name System and Internet Addresses (October 11)

  • Laura DeNardis, “Scarcity and Internet Governance,” pp. 1-6 and “The Internet Address Space,” pages 139-147 of Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance, MIT Press 2009.
  • Milton Mueller, Chapter 4 of Networks and States, MIT Press 2010, pages 55-80.

Class 8. Politics of Internet Technical Design (October 18)

Class 9. CyberSecurity (October 25)

  • Milton Mueller, “Security Governance on the Internet,” Chapter 8 of Networks and States, The Global Politics of Internet Governance, MIT Press, 2010, pp. 159-183.

Class 10. The Policy Role of Search Engines and Information Intermediaries (November 1)

  • Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Render unto Caesar: How Google Came to Rule the Web,” Chapter 1 of The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry), University of California Press 2011. Chapter 1 is available online at http://www.ucpress.edu/excerpt.php?isbn=9780520258822#readchapter1.
  • Ethan Zuckerman, “Intermediary Censorship,” Chapter 5 of Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and Rule in Cyberspace, MIT Press 2010.

Section IV. Infrastructure

Class 11. Digital Inequality and Broadband Access Policies

  • World Bank Report, Yongsoo Kim, Tim Kelly, and Siddhartha Raja, “Building Broadband Strategies and Policies for the Developing World,” January 2010. Reading available on Blackboard. Read pages 1-12 and 36-57.
  • Paul DiMaggio, Eszter Hargittai, Coral Celeste and Steven Shafer, “Digital Inequality: From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use,” *Read pages 30-36 only* in Social Inequality, Kathryn Neckerman, ed. Russell Sage Foundation, 2004. Reading available on Blackboard.

Class 12. Network Neutrality (November 15)

  • Ed Felten, “Nuts and Bolts of Network Neutrality.” Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. Reading available on Blackboard.
  • Susan Crawford, New York Times Op/Ed on Net Neutrality.

Class 13. Internet Blocking and Filtering (November 29)

Class 14. Policy Prospects for the Future of the Internet (December 6)

Class 15. Course Wrap-up and Informal Project Presentations (December 13)

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