In her classic essay on “Situated Knowledges,” Donna Haraway argues against the idea of a “view from nowhere” and for “partial, locatable, critical knowledges.” In this assignment, you’ll develop your ability to locate the knowledge you access through digital networks. In your first two assignments, you located your own positions and you traced the progress of a discussion or image through multiple perspectives on social media. Now, you will narrow your focus and engage deeply with the production of knowledge in one particular area.
Research skills classes often teach about reliable and unreliable sources, encouraging you to pursue academic databases rather than Google and Wikipedia, but that’s only part of the story. After all, even if we don’t cite them in formal assignments, web searches are the source of much of the information we use in everyday life. We often treat that information as if it comes, in Haraway’s words, from “nowhere.” But if it doesn’t come from nowhere, where does it come from?
The purpose of this assignment is for you to think through what lies behind the information that we are constantly accessing when we look things up online. You will think through these questions by tracing the online production of knowledge around an example of your choice. Like an archaeologist, you will peel back the layers of fact, opinion, and debate, allowing a complex and multiple picture to emerge.
Criteria for your example:
• You may write about a person, an event, a place, an object, or a publication. You may not write about an abstract issue – that will make the assignment too vague to carry out. If you are interested in a particular issue, find a concrete embodiment of it to focus on. (I can help if you’re struggling with this.)
• Your chosen example must meet Wikipedia’s notability criteria (because its presence on Wikipedia is part of what you will be analyzing)
• You must choose something that has generated a substantial amount of online discourse. (The more controversial your topic, the easier this assignment will be.)
• You must be able to articulate a clear connection between your chosen subject and our class’s focus.
Format of the assignment:
You will analyze five sources of knowledge that focus on your chosen example. One must be its Wikipedia article (including the Talk page). The others may be any web source – including now-defunct pages accessed through archival means such as the Wayback Machine (archive.org) and journal articles accessed through UMD’s databases subscriptions. The crucial thing in this assignment is to pay attention not only to the content of what you find out but to the ways it is framed and structured: not just the WHAT but also the HOW, WHERE, WHY and WHO.
For each of the sources you choose, write a paragraph (at least 200 words in addition to quotations and/or screenshots) answering the following questions as relevant. Not all will make sense for every source, so you don’t have to answer the questions one by one: use your judgment and creativity to craft an analysis that highlights the most significant elements.
• How did this information get onto your screen? What work did it take, and how can you see its traces?
• Who were the actors (people, organizations, funding sources, technological artefacts) involved in this representation of the issues?
• Which perspectives are considered legitimate here? Which are excluded?
• What conflicts or disagreements have taken place in relation to this representation? How can you see their traces?
In order to answer these questions, you will have to engage with more than five sites; use links to show where you found additional information.
After discussing your five sources, include one more paragraph exploring the connections and contradictions you have discovered. How has your perspective changed as a result of doing this research?
Before posting your online archaeology on the website, you will share your findings with the class on April 27. On that day, you will post a draft of your exploration to the blog before class and arrive prepared to talk through it in front of the group and to offer feedback to your peers.
The final submission for this assignment is due on the blog on April 29.