racism

Submitted by Carolyn Caffrey on December 10th, 2018
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Short Description: 

This assignment was created for a credit bearing course for first year students. It's designed to help students take what they've learned about algorithmic bias from the course lectures and readings and apply it to their own search practices. They also critically analyze search results for advertisements and compare DuckDuckGo to Google. [You could also look at this assignment as an adaptation of Jacob Berg's wonderful, "Googling Google," assignment at https://www.projectcora.org/assignment/googling-google-search-engines-ma... ]

Attachments: 
AttachmentSize
analyzingsearchengines_assignment.docxdisplayed 1314 times534.31 KB
Learning Outcomes: 

Students will be able to: -identify advertisements within a list of search results -discuss the role advertising plays in how search results are ordered -describe how search results are impacted by human biases in their ranking algorithms

Discipline: 
Multidisciplinary

Individual or Group:

Course Context (e.g. how it was implemented or integrated): 

This assignment occurred early in the semester as we discussed algorithms, bias, and filter bubbles. Students were asked to draw on class discussions and lectures on page rank, the history of search engines, and filter bubbles. Other assigned material going into this assignment the IRL podcast episode "Social Bubble Bath" and Eli Pariser's TED talk on filter bubbles. Students commented that they enjoyed this assignment, weren't aware that Google was an advertising company, and were unfamiliar with DuckDuckGo. The course itself was designed and taught by me (a librarian) as part of our first year seminar program.

Assessment or Criteria for Success
Assessment Short Description: 
Assignments were evaluated using the rubric from the attached assignment sheet. In general, students had difficulty identifying all of the advertisements. While students had no difficulty analyzing gender bias or racism in the image results, they did struggle with the phrase "god" in identifying how the results may privilege particular narratives and identities over others.
Potential Pitfalls and Teaching Tips: 

Be careful with the choose your own image search --- several students picked topics such as our institution name or vague concepts like "music" which didn't as clearly illustrate the course concepts. In the future I would remove the choose your own option for the image component. This assignment was designed with first year students in mind.

Suggested Citation: 
Caffrey, Carolyn . "Analyzing search engines: What narrative is told through the algorithm." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2018. https://projectcora.org/assignment/analyzing-search-engines-what-narrative-told-through-algorithm.
Submitted by Melanie Hubbard on May 16th, 2018
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Short Description: 

This assignment requires students to apply their knowledge of antisemitic tropes to tweets with the final outcome of the assignment being a short analytical paper and a presentation.

Attachments: 
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Antisemitism_Social Media_Assignment.docxdisplayed 671 times22.42 KB
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Student Presentation Templatedisplayed 984 times1.25 MB
"About Assignment" Presentationdisplayed 1201 times8.57 MB
Learning Outcomes: 

Students will gain: greater social media literacy (e.g. the ability to analyze the visual and textual aspects of tweets), the ability to identify antisemitic motifs on social media, and greater reasoning, writing, and oral presentation skills.

Individual or Group:

Course Context (e.g. how it was implemented or integrated): 

This assignment was designed for the class History of Antisemitism (JWST 4375) in Spring 2018. Students worked in pairs and each pair was given a single tweet selected by the digital scholarship librarian and approved by the faculty member.

The criteria for the tweets were: 1.) they had to be clearly antisemitic, 2.) they contained a visual, e.g. a meme, 3.) there was something significant about the tweeter or the receiver (if there was one), or both. For example, the tweeter was a known politician, or the receiver was a known journalist.

Students were given a Powerpoint template that they were required to follow, the intention being to keep them from getting too bogged down in the slide creation process and to help them structure themselves more effectively.

To introduce the assignment, the digital scholarship librarian presented some background on antisemitism and social media and then went through all of the tweets that were selected for the assignment. During this time, students were asked to begin analyzing what they were seeing and to identify ways they might start their research.

Additional Instructor Resources (e.g. in-class activities, worksheets, scaffolding applications, supplemental modules, further readings, etc.): 

Presentation template

Suggested Citation: 
Hubbard, Melanie. "Antisemitism on Social Media Essay." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2018. https://projectcora.org/assignment/antisemitism-social-media-essay.
Submitted by Jacob Berg on November 4th, 2016
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Short Description: 

There is a large body of research on corporate ownership and control of traditional media, such as print, television, and radio. Comparatively, research about corporate control of what we see online is underdeveloped, yet search engines are often the first place students uncritically look for research as opposed to the library website, catalogs, and discovery services. Dr. Safiya Noble shows that Google image searches for black women often perpetuate and reinforce dominant narratives involving racism and misogyny. As Google is often seen as neutral, such search results are presented as “natural,” the way things are, when in fact they are the products of capitalism, hegemonic patriarchy, and white supremacy. Interrogating results such as these is one goal of this lesson plan, along with getting students to think critically about, to problematize, the everyday tools used in the research process and to explore links between capitalism and racism, misogyny, and homophobia.

Attachments: 
AttachmentSize
vol2_chapter 11.pdfdisplayed 1839 times295.04 KB
Learning Outcomes: 

Articulate clearly how algorithms such as PageRank influence information-seeking behavior and search results. Explain Google’s data security and privacy issues. Create searches that show critical thinking and awareness of how Google works.

Individual or Group:

Suggested Citation: 
Berg, Jacob. "Googling Google: Search Engines as Market Actors ." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2016. https://projectcora.org/assignment/googling-google-search-engines-market-actors.