[Air-L] Lesson plans for teaching for a peaceful, diverse world that is safe for everyone

Sat Nov 12 01:51:47 PST 2016

A belated but heartfelt thanks for this, Jill.
A couple of thoughts that I hope will be helpful.
1.  To state the obvious, these entail moves towards normativity that, in
my experience, most social scientists and no small number of humanists
(especially as influenced by the relativistist implications /
interpretations of post-modernism, etc.) will resist.  Both for broadly
disciplinary reasons (positivist-inspired notions of objectivity, etc.) and
historical reasons.  E.g.: on a panel a couple of years ago with two of the
luminaries in our field,  I was arguing for a more overt embrace of virtue
ethics: one of the grand and dear colleagues (no, I'm not being ironic or
sarcastic: these are folk I deeply admire and respect, and I like to think
the affection is mutual) gently explained to me how discussions over
"values" in the social science disciplines of their particular expertise
nearly tore the fields apart in their home country, and hence, however
sympathetic they might be, they were not enthusiastic for initiatives that
would risk opening up those old wounds and/or new wars.
So while I of course endorse the initiatives and much appreciate the many
excellent responses these have evoked - I worry that they might be
short-circuited and undermined by disciplinary allegiances and
requirements, to begin with.  (There are also unhappy but instructive
parallels with the various calls in the past few years for AoIR to make
commitments to social justice more defined and explicit.  But to quote dear
Leonard Cohen, may peace be upon his soul, we'll save that little story for
another rainy day.)

2. I also wonder - no surprise - about what clear and explicit ethical
grounds we might point to as shaping, if not grounding, these initiatives?
Not because I don't think they cannot be discerned and taken up: if
anything, the ethical initiatives of the AoIR communities over the past
sixteen years, including their endorsement of developing an internet
research ethics 3.0, demonstrate exactly the contrary.  But it is one thing
to do so within a relatively confined area of research - it is something
else, as I see it, to open up the conversation to nothing less ambitious
than, at least as it appears to me, the ethical frameworks and norms
guiding education more broadly.  To be sure, I would welcome such
discussion: in my view, we need to recover, revise, and refresh the ethical
norms - including emancipation, equality, and respect - that drove at least
the ideals of liberal arts education and _bildung_ / _dannelse_ over the
past couple of centuries.  Recover them in opposition to the 30-40 years of
neoliberal attacks on humanistic education in the name of a kind of Fordist
take-over of the university - and revisit and transform them vis-a-vis the
important critiques from feminists, post-colonial theorists, and many, many
others.
Whether or not such a project can be inaugurated by AoIR - well, it should
be inaugurated somehow, but I'm not immediately seeing the best way forward
here.

3.  I'm sure it's not an option everyone will want to endorse or pursue,
but I would add - no surprise - that there is, in my view, solid work on
(virtue) ethics, feminist ethics of care, and deontological commitments to
equality and respect vis-a-vis communication in both online and offline
environments: this scholarship and research help foreground the virtues of
empathy, patience, perseverance, trust, and even (gasp) loving itself as
necessary first of all to communication per se, and thereby friendships and
intimate relationships, as components of good lives marked by flourishing
and contentment.  I'm thinking primarily of the work of Shannon Vallor
vis-a-vis online communication, but also the work of Aimee van Wynsberghe
and others in the domain of social robots, including care bots. (I may be a
minority in this, but I see social robots as prime sites for research in
media and communication, FWIW.)
These examples might be valuable as both introducing students to ethical
frameworks that are already in play in media and communication research -
frameworks that highlight and justify basic norms of equality, respect, and
so on.  From there it would be an easy step to expand the discussions, as
needed and appropriate, to the larger contexts of our not only being
researchers, but our also being human beings and citizens necessarily
engaged in and to some degree responsible for our larger worlds.

Again, a thousand thanks for inaugurating this thread, and for the many
terrific responses it has evoked.  Hope the above makes some sort of
helpful contribution along the way.

bestest,
- charles ess

Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication
University of Oslo
<http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
<http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>

Editor, The Journal of Media Innovations
<https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/TJMI/>
<https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/TJMI/>

Postboks 1093
Blindern 0317
Oslo, Norway
c.m.ess at media.uio.no

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 11:57 AM, Jill Walker Rettberg <
Jill.Walker.Rettberg at uib.no> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> After the US elections I am sure many of us, whereever we live, are
> thinking about how to plan next semester’s teaching so that it helps equip
> the next generation to deal with an increasingly frightening world.
>
> Within internet research, some obvious topics we can discuss are things
> like polarisation of polticial views, filter bubbles, algorithmic news
> filtering and the increasing spread of fake news. More generally, we can
> design activities that foster critical thinking, empathy, understanding of
> people who are not like oneself, and relate this to
> technology/internet/media.
>
> Maybe this would also be a good time to bring discussions of pre-internet
> media and technology and their role in the years before WW2, or even
> earlier dangerous times, and to compare this to social media etc today?
>
> I don’t yet have very clear ideas about this, but I would love to share
> ideas with other internet researchers who teach and who want to do the best
> we can in our teaching to counteract the racism, sexism, hatred, distrust
> of government and of others, and general division that is not only
> affecting the USA but obviously Europe and other parts of the world as well.
>
> I know many of us already teach these things, but maybe not in as focused
> a way as I think we may need to do in future? Or maybe the resources I’m
> longing for already exist?
>
> If you have ideas, please share them! If this is something several of us
> are interested in, we could set up a syllabus/Google doc / Facebook group
> or something. I’m thinking case studies with readings and lesson plans
> would be a really useful resource and might be a way we could do some good
> in all this.
>
> Jill
>
>
> Jill Walker Rettberg
> Professor of Digital Culture
> Dept of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies
> University of Bergen
> Postboks 7800
> 5020 Bergen
>
> + 47 55588431
>
> Blog - http://jilltxt.net
> Twitter - http://twitter.com/jilltxt
> My book "Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs
> and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves" is out on Palgrave as an
> open access publication - buy it in print or download it for free!
> http://jilltxt.net/books
>
>
>
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