Module 4 Post-Test

First, please read each question and take time to consider how you'd respond to each. Then choose ONE question and elaborate on your answer (referring to at least one of the required "Interactivity" readings) for posting in the Module 4 Discussion forum. Discussions open Mon. Feb. 19 and close Fri. Mar. 2.

1. Compare your ideas about online or web "communities" from before you began this module with what you now know, given the various perspectives you've read. How have your views about web community-building changed ... or have they? Which readings have most influenced (or reinforced) your current view?

2. Recall Ursula Franklin's view of reciprocity and its role in community forming. Now consider Wood and Smith's analysis of the mediated society and the mediated self ("Immediacy versus Mediation"). Does their analysis reinforce or counter Franklin's belief that technologically mediated communication--especially via the web--can never be a "real" or "genuine" experience?

3. When you think about the web and how it mediates communication, do you see yourself as a techno-utopian, or more of a techno-sceptic? Use appropriate resources from this module, including one of the required "Interactivity" readings, to justify your stance.

4. Consider the article you choose from the 2005 special issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. What assumptions does the article make about online or web "community"? Does the article assume that the concept of "community" can and does apply to online environments? Or (à la Franklin) does the article interrogate the concept that "community" can even exist in online environments?

5. Re-examine any one of your "Interactivity" readings. Pick out key terms that convey to you how this writer has constructed a "discourse" (or rhetoric) of the web. How would you characterize this discourse, and why? Do you think the writer is justified in constructing the web this way?

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