Week 14: Internet Memes, Going Viral, and Launching Our Collaborative Project
Our class discussions this week led us in a different direction than we originally planned for our online advocacy project, but I get the sense that everyone is more excited about our revised focus. At this point, each of you should be working with a few of your classmates to make progress on a specific aspect of this project. Please use our shared class folder in Google Drive to store all materials related to this project, and be sure to use clear and obvious file-naming conventions to label anything you add to the folder.
Right now, our biggest priority is finalizing a logo for use on our various social media accounts and developing our “calling cards” in InDesign. If you’re working on these tasks, please be ready to share drafts of your work with the whole class on Monday. By the time we leave class on Wednesday, we should be ready to officially “launch” our project.
Here’s how we’ll spend our time in class and what you need to do to prepare:
- On Monday, we will discuss internet memes and how they might apply to our collaborative project. To prepare for our conversation, please read “What Defines a Meme?“, by James Gleick, and “How Memes Are Orchestrated by the Man,” by Kevin Ashton. When you’re done, add a comment to this post that links to your favorite internet meme. If you aren’t familiar with memes, you might want to start looking at Know Your Meme, MemeCenter, or Greg Rutter’s “Definitive List of the 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced on the Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something.” (Oh, and just in case this wasn’t obvious: out of respect for your classmates, please keep it clean.) After our discussion, we will spend the rest of class reviewing logos and calling cards for our collaborative project. (Anyone can bring a draft to share with the class!)
- On Wednesday, we will consider the concept of “virality.” Before you come to class, please read “What Makes Something Go Viral?“, by Andrew Phelps, and “How to Improve Your Chances of Going Viral.” After our discussion, we will finalize our “launch” plans for our collaborative project and decide how we will promote and monitor our project over the last two weeks of the semester.
I’m looking forward to another great week of lively discussions, and I can’t wait to see how our online advocacy project evolves!