Community Ethnography

The post has three assignments

1:Discourse Community Ethnography

For this paper, you will select an identifiable group of people that operates online and whose participants differ from you in a significant way (in terms of our humanities topics: race, class, nationality*, gender, or sexuality. You should spend a significant amount of time observing this group and, on the basis of your observations and readings on discourse communities, write a paper in which you argue that the group either is or is not a discourse community.

*“nationality” isn’t in our humanities topics but I’m putting that in as a possibility as well.
What is ethnography?
“ethnos” = “people, nation, class, caste, tribe; a number of people accustomed to living together”
“graphia” = “description of,” particularly a written description
Essentially, ethnography is a form of empirical, qualitative research that attempts to explore cultural phenomena, and in so doing shed light on the knowledge, values, and dynamics of a cultural group.

What is discourse?
Depends on who you ask! But basically, discourse is the idea of conversation happening within a given context or via a given method/channel/modality.

How do researchers observe discourse?
Typically, through
Field observations
Interviews
Surveys
In our case, your “observation” will consist of reading the texts produced by an online group of people; these texts may be written, or pictorial, or visual, or video-based. Depending on the group you choose to study, you may have the option of conducting in-person interviews, or you may be able to talk to your research subjects online, either through the medium of their community or via some other channel.

What is a discourse community?
This also varies slightly depending on who you ask, and we’ll examine it further in later lectures, but basically a discourse community is a group of people who are in some way defined by using a form of discourse that differs in a substantial way from the discourse used by the society around them.
Not all groups are discourse communities, as we shall see, and not all people that employ a form of discourse can be said to belong to a particular group, as we shall see in upcoming discussions.

Paper requirements:
–A concise, specific thesis that encapsulates how your community of choice accomplishes its discourse.
–A well-considered determination of whether the group is a discourse community or merely a group defined by some other factor.
–Observations that reflect a prolonged and careful examination of your subject, and which constitute the bulk of the material in your paper.
–A substantial contribution—tell your readers something they don’t already know, and that they wouldn’t be able to easily guess.
–Self-awareness—an indication that you know how your own perspective colors your interpretation of the group you observe.
–Five full pages, as before, not counting the Works Cited page.
–Three sources, which will not be the primary focus of your paper but which you should use to support the claims you make based on your observations; they do not need to be academic, but they should still be as credible and authoritative as they need to be.

2: Interface for Image Display

Provide an overview or outline of the content of the article or lecture, together with your own reaction or comments, and referencing the source of the article or lecture with a link. Your discussion of the article or lecture should not exceed two pages.
Append a glossary defining and/or illustrating key terminology specific to the discussion being reviewed.
Use APA style to list and cite sources. Provide live links to all sources you list.

4.2 Create a Web Interface for Image Display

Create a simple, single-page to display thumbnails of image files relating to a specific topic. These could be your own vacation photos, animal or nature images, favorite performers, athletes, etc. Images from copyrighted sources may be used for this purpose without permission, but should be credited as to their source. Size the thumbnails to maintain the correct aspect ratio (i.e., so that the images in the thumbs are not distorted), set the thumbs up as links to the actual image files, and organize the thumbnails.

Use APA style to list and cite sources. Provide live links to all sources you list

4.3 Create an Intuitive Image Map Interface

Using an image map, and any image of your choice, create a language-free, intuitive interface allowing the user to access links on related topics. For example (and you may not use this), an image of a face could be mapped so that when the user clicks on the eyes, a link to a site relating to vision is activated, ears lead to a site on hearing, nose to a site on smell, etc.) At least 10 links should be mapped. Save the image map as a web page.

Use APA style to list and cite sources. Provide live links to all sources you list

MIT Scratch is a programming interface that allows the user to create simple animations and interactive graphical applications using a ‘building blocks’ approach. Non-programmers can easily learn to use the interface (it was in fact designed to introduce programming concepts to young children), and the tutorial provided on the Scratch website is excellent.

4.4 Create an Interactive Application Using MIT Scratch

Download and install the Scratch toolkit, complete the basic tutorial and study the examples provided with the program.
Create an original application with an interactive element. The interactive aspect of the application may be as simple as the user being able to control the appearance or movement of the graphic elements by keystroke, but should go beyond simply running an animation by clicking to start.
Submit your results as either a Scratch program file or by screen capturing the program in use

4.5 Create a Interface for Course Topic Explorations

This would contain sub-pages

The main page should be a welcome page, containing information to the effect that the article contains your links to relevant article on main topic areas of the course. Sub-pages should be dedicated to, and titled:

Design Principles for HCI
Specialized Input Devices and Their Applications
Specialized Output Devices and Their Applications
Emerging Interface Concepts and Technologies

3:The “collaborator”, “researcher”, “innovator/entrepreneur”, and “Engineer”) and to examine this question by assuming your role. So my role is the Engineer, so you are to answer this question as an engineer or from the view of point of an engineer. (500 words minimum)

How does fracking deal with culture in terms of global societal need and social justice (whom it helps and whom it hurts)?

What is Hydraulic Fracking?
https://www.propublica.org/special/hydraulic-fracturing-national (Links to an external site.)

Natural Gas Extraction- Hydraulic Fracturing
https://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing (Links to an external site.)

Fracking and Environmental Justice:

Community Ethnography