Hi y'all, sorry if I'm late on this....was dealing with some physical whatnot.

And my downloadable pdf notes...

I've been a fan of Amanda Fucking Palmer (AFP; and no really, that's what she often goes by) since her Dresden Dolls days, and in the TED talk I've attached below, she has a great perspective on crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and the intellectual property of her music.  It reminded me of the conversation at the beginning of the semester when Kim asked us to think outside the box for ways we could work around copyright and intellectual property rights and in this, I think AFP has a unique take on this issue.  I thought it was insightful from the artist's perspective and I hope you all can get something from her talk also.  ~Rachel

Hey everybody,
You can access the text I shared yesterday via this link:

Please find below my visual slides below. The last image is the visual text  I mentioned in my discussion, but did not have the opportunity to embed in the power point presentation. As you can see, I hope to link and draw parallels similar to how West links to the "primitive imaginary" with "global poverty". This "pulling theory" process is proving to be quite a fun challenge. Thank you once again for the constructive criticism and suggestions :)

Because I used Prezi for my slides, you can access it here.  Here is the transcript from my amazing notes for the presentation:

The Accidental Social Movement: An Examination of Hybrid Social Movements Through the "It Gets Better" Campaign

- Purpose of Research Proposal: To examine the societal and cultural effects of online content that “goes viral” and becomes an accidental social movements.

- Literature Review Sections:
- New Communication Technology
            - Media system dependency theory
                   - The nature of online platforms is unique. The freedom from geographical constraints coupled   
                      with the ability to control much of the content on one’s own profile page has proven to be    
                      useful to members of minority groups who may not have contact with each other in traditional  
                      communication settings.  This ability to breakdown geographical barriers is one of a myriad of 
                      reasons SNS are a unique and uncharted form of media.  Unlike traditional forms of media--
                      television, telephone, newspapers, etc.—that were examined when MSDT was first 
                      conceptualized, the information flow between users, and the system is much more dynamic.  
                      Specifically, when MSDT was first conceptualized, the flow of information between users and the 
                      media system, with the media system controlling the content and flow of information (Ball-
                      Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976).  This however, is no longer the case in regards to SNS.
                   - NCT also provides a unique platform within which individuals have found ways to challenge the 
                     notions of traditional intellectual property as articulated by Coleman.  
- The Virtual Public Sphere
         - Outlines both traditional concepts of the public sphere (like Habermas) and the challenges to it 
            by scholars like Warner, Fraser and Hall.  
         - Using both Rowe and Bhabha’s concepts of in-betweenness (or liminality).  This public sphere 
            occupies an “in-between” space where actions within virtual spaces affect the material world and 
            vice versa.
- Social Movements
          - Castells conceptualization of social movements in the information age with online social   
             networks. 
           - The concept of slacktivism, or “armchair activism”
- -scapes and globalization
           - Appadurai’s scapes (ideo-, techno-, media-, finance-, and ethno-) which are complicated by both 
             Tsing’s notions of friction and West’s complications of this flow.  
          - How these scapes are complimented and complicated by the virtual realm.

- Object of Analysis: This study will use the "It Gets Better" campaign to examine the effects of image 
   events that inadvertently become social movements.

-Research Question: RQ1: How does the “purely online nature” of the movement affect its effectiveness at    
  the global, national and local scale?

- Method: Uses the framework of Appadurai's -scapes and queer standpoint theory.

- Projected Argument: Because the It Gets Better campaign is an unorthodox social movement, it's effects are also unorthodox.

- Implications (Stakes): By examining these "accidental social movements," we can learn about how they effect change at various social scales.

Extra Notes:
The fact that much of the movement is online is of specific interest to me, especially in regards to Hall’s (1996) notions of the displacements of centered discourses and how they apply to discourses within the virtual realm.  Also, I believe that because the movement is not prescriptive, calling for specific actions by the government, but merely asking for queer youth to be patient until it gets better, the It Gets Better campaign acts as little more than just a global media event with moments mirroring a social movement.  I am also, aware of the fact that perhaps the It Gets Better campaign is a new kind of movement, one that does not illicit relatively immediate change like movements within the Arab Spring did, but is a movement that will happen over the course of years or even decades when individuals who are raised on tolerance, acceptance and hope eventually take over the positions of power within the government and society.

Slide 1- Notes
Purpose
To focus on the Seed sovereignty movement (Beej swaraj), specifically the Bt Brinjal see row in India. Ecological activist group Navdanya (Vandana Shiva) was a major player in this movement. The movement followed the principles of Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha movement. It stake was to stand up against Seed Laws and Patent Laws that seek to make sharing and saving of seed a crime by making seed the "Property" of companies like Monsanto, forcing farmers to pay royalties for what is the collective heritage (Use Boyle's conception of romantic author).
Among the wide range of actors, I want to focus specifically on the farmers, how they construct themselves as actors, what are their ideologies. How they conceive certain specific objective and how their objective differ based on locales. (Use Tsing (2005) notion of scales)
RQ: 
How do activists with different scales (created around certain local and specific meaning) use universal rhetoric to mange and device coalitions? How do encounters across differences exceed boundaries to transform consciousness?

Slide 2- Notes
Background
Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds. A free resource available on farms became a commodity. In 1993 half a million Indian peasants pledge to resist classification of seeds as private property.
 However, victorious struggle for neem, basmati rice and Indian wheat reclaimed collective biology and
intellectual heritage as commons. Neem tree activism (movement mobilized and built at the local levels) and its success laid the path for other activism like basmati rice, Indian wheat. Neem victory brought to the forefront that most patents are based on the appropriation of indigenous knowledge, which violates the basic criteria of patent (novelty, nonobviousness, utility) as they range from direct piracy to minor tinkering involving steps obvious to anyone trained in the techniques and disciplines involved. 

A more recent activism is the Bt Brinjal Seeds row.  

Vandana Shiva in her book Earth Democracy talks about going  beyond divisions and collectively creating the possibility of creating a post globalization world. But as Tsing pointed out this gives power to globalization as the cost of the people who are the real actors. Therefore, my focus on studying the scale making at the grass root level. 

Methodology
 I plan to do discourse analysis of news published regarding the activism. India being an Agrarian community there is a wide difference in language, ideology between farmers from different geographical
area. I will use community newspapers example Deccan Herald (Southern India)  and Ganasakti (Eastern
India). I will look at three mainstream English language national newspapers in India: The Times of India, The Hindu, and The Indian Express to understand the activism at the national level. I will analyze articles from August 2009 to July 2012. I am choosing this time frame as during this time the controversy regarding
Monsanto's illegally use of Indian brinjal seeds to create GM seeds came into prominence, which triggered country wide uprising, questioning to reconsider patent law. 

Slide 3- Notes
Argument
In the claim to invention of traditional knowledge it is necessary to understand Boyle's notion of romantic author and how the concept of traditional knowledge, too, is a modern invention. Although India's IP act
Geographical Indication is seen as a potentially important source of recognition and income for India's rural poor, who have been displaced and forced further into poverty by globalization, the Act protects only those goods or processes whose quality or reputation are exclusive to a specific region and neglecting other regions that even though produces similar products but lacks in reputation. 
I will use Tsing's scales to chart how individual actors form and attain agency, how images are formed and what ideologies are embedded in those images. Ideas that are formulated via those agencies and  how ideas are mobilized to bring about consciousness. How peasants from different geographical locales  come
together in social activism even when they each differ in their specific personal objective. 
As Madhavi Sunder (2007) stated, "The poor must be recognized as both receivers and producers of knowledge" (p. 124) I intend to find how the actions and inactions of farmers at different scales challenge the failure of IP laws and point at the corporate misuse. 
 

ARGUMENT

• Afro-Latinas as a subculture within the Laitin@ imaginary. How do these productions of Latinidad get played out in the public sphere? 
• Tumblr – a new set of technology – a blogging site

1. As of march 2, 2013, Tumblr has over 96 million blogs
2. Available in iphone apps and blackberry smartphones
3. Founded in 2007 by David Karp and Marco Arment
4. Service is most popular with teens and college-aged users
5. Half of the Tumblr visitor base is under the age of 25
6. 12 languages available

• I aim to treat Tumblr as an actor itself (why?)

1. Had limitations. Ex) limit amount of posts, must obey IP rights and regulations
   

• What is the public-ness of these virtual spaces?
• Are there multiple spaces?
• How are people talking about Tumblr as a narrative space?

ACCESABILIY: who has access to the internet?

1. Linguistic challenges
2. Diaspora politics
3. Privilege (how does privilege look like in virtual spaces like Tumblr?)
4. How is technology accessed?

• Key Point: Do these resistances only stay in virtual spaces?
• Is Tumblr both a material and a discursive space?

STAKES

• Not making an argument of the magazine itself, but I am using the magazine as a production of identities that allow us to look at the larger stakes.
• Neoliberal, contemporary capitalism agendas & postfeminism, and post-racialism
• mobilization of identity and meaning in neoliberal discourses 
• Must use the magazine and Tumblr to interrogate the politics of identity production within the larger contexts.
• Paige West and Tsing as fundamental theories in my theoretical framework 
• West – neoliberalism produces both hegemony and counterhegemony
• Tsing- relationship between identity, capitalism and social media is messy and has micro-sites of resistance that are different.

This section needs more work. Need to unpack more of my theoretical framework in order to address the larger stakes. I will also look at James Clifford's book, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, as recommended by Kim.  

Here I am posting my three slides and the original text I used for my presentation. I made some changes and additions on paper before my presentation, but the basic gist is the same. 

Overview                    

The tentative title of my project is “Reframing Intellectual Property in College Classrooms.”

My project starts with the observation that college classrooms are sites of contention where students and faculty negotiate competing discourses of intellectual property. In this study, I examine how teachers and students understand one aspect of intellectual property—plagiarism—through the discourses of another aspect of intellectual property—copyright. And vice-versa, I examine how we understand copyright through plagiarism.

The concept of “reframing” is important because the study deals primarily with the stories we tell about students, composing, and information...


So what?                     

The way that we frame or conceptualize plagiarism and copyright has important implications for education as well as our conception of information ownership more broadly...           

This is not a disinterested study of intellectual property discourses. Like many Composition scholars, I am concerned that instructors and university administrators predominantly approach plagiarism through the rhetoric of fear and punishment. This approach has negative pedagogical implications for students because it further mystifies academic writing, glosses over the diversity of values and practices surrounding source use both in and outside of academia, conflicts with our goals as educators, and fails to prepare students to use sources effectively in future writing contexts…. (provide example)

As a teacher of writing, I am interested in identifying ways that instructors and university administrators can move past the current reductive and problematic approach to plagiarism. Some scholars have suggested that copyright, which has gained importance in education as students compose in digital environments, presents an opportunity for positively reframing discourses of plagiarism. These scholars have turned to alternative models of intellectual property from the “copy-left.” Copy-left conceptions of intellectual property challenge the dominant discourse’s emphasis on Romantic authorship and its blindnesses to the social, cultural, and ethical aspects of information ownership.

This study thus enters into larger debates over intellectual property because it argues for a specific conception of intellectual property, one that is sensitive to the social aspects of communication and the ownership of information which are largely ignored in legal or economic-based treatments of intellectual property…   

                                               
“Argument”                

So while our discipline has pointed to copyright as an opportunity to reframe plagiarism and while compositionists are ideologically invested in this change, as of yet we have no systematic studies that provide empirical data on how plagiarism and copyright are currently talked about in college classrooms. My study seeks to provide rich and multilayered account of how copyright and plagiarism are currently framed at one university.

My central research question, then, are these: How are conceptions of intellectual property negotiated in college classrooms through the terms of plagiarism and copyright? What are the implications of this negotiation for student learners?   

Although I hope to encounter classrooms where copy-left discourses of intellectual property reframe approaches to plagiarism, I may find that concepts such as copyright might instead be folded under and presented to students in educational contexts through the dominant frames and narratives of plagiarism.               


Methods                      

In order to examine how instructors and students negotiate their understanding of intellectual property through the relationships between plagiarism and copyright, I investigate three educational contexts at Washington State University. These contexts are first-year writing courses, upper level writing in the major courses, and library instruction sessions.

I will collect data from course materials, such as plagiarism statements, handouts, and assignment sheets; recordings and notes from class observations; recorded interviews with students and instructors; and copies of student work.

I will use discourse analysis to code these materials and identify patterns in how the narratives of copyright, plagiarism, and intellectual property function in these classrooms.

 

Lightening Round Presentation Order and Discussants:

1. Jorge: Tiffany and Somava
   
2. Tiffany: Rachel and Jorge
   
3. Rachel: Dell and Lizeth
   
4. Dell: Annita and Jen
   
5. Lizeth: Tiffany and Jorge
   
6. Jen: Lizeth and Dell
   
7. Annita: Somava and Rachel
   
8. Somava: Annita and Jen
   

This actually relates to both this class and AMST 524, in which last week we read Sarah Banet-Weiser's Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in Brand Culture. Banet-Weiser talks about brands as being all wrapped up in American culture and how such branding is about the selling of not just products but emotional relationships between consumer and company (where the company might be a big corporation like Dove or an individual selling him/herself online). Of course, while reading that I thought about West's coffee ethnography and the creation of affective relationships re: specialty coffees, among other things.

Anyway, I had a rather cool moment in my WSt 200 class today that I wanted to reflect on. We're beginning a section on media representations of women, and I showed them the Dove Evolution commercial from 2006 that launched Dove's Real Beauty campaign. About half the class had seen the commercial already, and they were quite familiar with the idea that beauty is constructed in these ads to fit certain (mainly unattainable) ideals. I asked them what possible benefit Dove might have in providing the consuming public with this "revelation." In essence, what is Dove selling? One student raised her hand and answered, "I think they're selling a relationship, trying to show us that they're not so bad and that they care about us."

It was a pretty rad moment for me to witness how many people realize, on some level, the branding that happens and the huge extent to which companies will go to foster "authentic" relationships with their consumers. I guess my question was (and I would have asked the student, but it would have gotten us off track from the subject matter at hand, maybe) how much that actually affected their consumption choices if they do understand this branding as another marketing ploy.