Analyse the influences on, and the influence of, a Technology and Culture reading
Paper details:
Choose one of the readings in the course reader. Write an analysis of (i) the influences that informed this text, and (ii) the influence that this text has had on other specified texts.
Any scholarly article that deals with the complex questions around culture and technology will draw on prior concepts, and research. It will affirm or reject existing paradigms as well as offering new evidence and making new claims and analyses. All academic texts reference earlier work, forming some relationship with that prior work.
At the same time, significant scholarly books and articles have influence on communities of readers. Their arguments and research change how people think. Sometimes they create controversy or outrage. Sometimes they change how a problem is conceived.
In this assignment, your analysis should identify documented references of both these types: the influences on the article from the readings (referenced in the text), and the influence of the article on others (when this article is cited).
Choose at least three cited influences and three documented examples of the influence of this article (or the book from which it is excerpted).
(i) Look for citations within the article that are important to the argument. Find the original sources of three, and read enough to get a sense of their argument, style and content.
Read around the topic to get a sense of where the reading fits into a scholarly community. Write a concise analysis of how each of the three cited articles informed the argument in the reading.
(ii) Find three articles that cite the reading, and analyse how the use the reading in their own argument. You search for citations of the article or book in the library catalogue, Google Scholar, Google Books, Amazon, WorldCat, Connotea and citeulike. Often you’ll find a ‘Cited by’ link in Google Scholar listing a number of articles that refer to your article. Find the articles, and analyse how they use the article in the reader. How is the cited work mobilised? Trace the lines of influence. If your reading is less than five years old, and there are few references citing it, you can also use other relevant influential work by the same author. Some articles have few citations: if so, choose another article.
Develop an argument about the significance of this reading within the broader tradition of themes in technocultural analysis. You’re working in the genre of a review article, so try to evaluate the key themes that are sustained through all 7 articles you’re using.