Syllabus

Journalism 676 Digital Media Law & Ethics

Fall 2015
5146 Vilas Hall
4-5:15 p.m. MW
1131 Humanities
Katy Culver
kbculver@wisc.edu
Office Hours: 8-9 W and by appt.

Introduction

Together we will examine legal and ethical questions surrounding digital media and their effects on society and individuals. Built as a collaborative enterprise between students and instructor, our course simultaneously covers topics and the technologies that can be used to learn about those topics. We will employ a variety of collaborative and social media to find and share information about issues and how to resolve them.

Goals

Through your work in this course, you should develop:

  • understanding of principles of law and ethics as applied to digital media
  • command of theories and ability to apply them to practical situations
  • familiarity with current and emerging issues in digital media
  • understanding of how technological changes affect legal and ethical principles
  • comfort with producing materials in a collaborative digital environment

Components

This course breaks down into the following weighted segments that constitute your final grade:

  1. exam 1: 25%
  2. exam 2: 25%
  3. group research project*: 30%
    *graduate students do individual research rather than group research project
  4. collaboration, discussion and participation: 20%

Grading

I will determine your final course grade by the percentage you earn of the total points available for the course. Although we will remain flexible to account for unforeseen issues, the final grade scale should roughly be:

  • 93% – 100%     =       A
  • 88% – 92%        =       AB
  • 80% – 87%        =       B
  • 75% – 79%        =       BC
  • 67% – 74%        =       C
  • 59% – 66%        =       D
  • 0% – 58%           =       F

You earn no points by failing to turn in an assignment, turning work in past the deadline or missing a class during which an assignment is given, critiqued or submitted. I will consider excused absences if:

  1. you have an extraordinary reason (e.g., serious illness documented by a health care provider or a death in the family) and
  2. you notify me of the absence in advance

I also excuse absences for participation in UW-sponsored activities, such as sports teams or artistic performances, and for observances of religious holidays that fall on a class day. If you need such an excused absence, you must notify me by e-mail within the first two weeks of class. Provide your name, the date of the absence and the reason you’ll be missing class. I will notify you about makeup work when the absence nears.

If you need learning-setting accommodations for disabilities of any sort, please bring a visa from the McBurney Center to my office within the first two weeks of class. I’ll be happy to make any necessary accommodations.

Integrity

If you engage in anything aptly labeled “academic misconduct,” including plagiarism, fabricating sources or turning in all or part of published content as your own, you will earn an “F” as your final course grade. Visit http://students.wisc.edu/saja/misconduct/misconduct.html for more information on misconduct. To clarify what is coming to be a common misconception, I enforce a prohibition on what some call “patch writing.” This practice involves copying chunks of writing from published sources and changing some percentage of words to elude plagiarism detection. Know that I consider this intellectual dishonesty well within my reading of the guidelines above. Such writing will result in an “F” just as certainly as direct plagiarism.

Tools

To successfully complete this course and get everything you should from it, you need to acquire and use the following:

Required Texts

  • Booth, Colomb and Williams. The Craft of Research
  • Lewis, Anthony. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate.
  • Plaisance, Patrick. Media Ethics: Key Principles for Responsible Practice

Course Site

Google Drive

  • We will use a shared drive for the course schedule, reading assignments, collaborative study guides and other tools. We will cover permissions and how to access on the first day of class.
  • If you’re not familiar with Google Drive, watch an online tutorial.

Media Streams

  • We will be dealing with a lot of breaking controversies and issues involving digital media. I will be posting links to stories, sometimes behind paywalls. I will not require you to subscribe to all publications but at a minimum, you will be required to complete all readings from the New York Times. I suggest getting one of their heavily discounted subscriptions. Visit Nytimes.com/college52 for more information.

Schedule

The topic schedule, discussion assignments and readings are posted in a master document in our Google Drive. I may update it as the class unfolds, but I will make highlights and notations if I do.