Weekly Activities

 
Week One: Introduction to Paper Assignment and Web Subcultures 
We will spend the first few class sessions exploring web zine sites and studying print-based zines, discussing their formal and cultural content. In particular, we will discuss stylistic and content issues in terms of audience and community. We will also read about alternative media and the history of zine culture so that you can understand zines as a genre and a social practice. We will then begin to draw distinctions between mainstream and alternative media. (See Bibliographic Resources)

By the end of the first week,you will have chosen a zine to analyze and for homework will fill out the Zine Worksheet for the following week's activities. The heuristic will become part of your "observation journal" which will be a place for you to store notes and up-to-date discoveries about your site. The observation journal will factor in as part of the grade for this assignment.

Specific Computer Activities

Readings from Zines, Volume 1 and articles on the history of alternative media with a discussion on an electronic bulletin board about how electronic communities are created. You will also email two students in the class to discuss what e-zine you are thinking about analyzing and ask them for feedback. 
Week Two: Introduction of Criteria; Web Literacy; Comparing to Mainstream Magazines
The first part of the week we will brainstorm criteria for evaluating and analyzing e-zines, looking at rhetorical and cultural issues and examining the commercial aspects of web zines.We will focus on how mainstream magazines are different in content and visual imagery and audience from zines. 

Your observation journal will focus on developing questions that you would want to ask of a participant of this group. After you have developed questions, email whoever runs the site and ask if you can do an email interview with them. Explain who you and and discuss your assignment's aim. 

Specific Computer Activities

Finish filling out e-zine invention exercise. Discuss and brainstorm criteria in small group chat rooms. Exercise in reading and analyzing e-zines in print and electronic form. You will work in groups to compare a mainstream magazine of comparable content to a zine, focusing on differences in approach, tone, subject matter, style, and ideologies. 
Week Three: Choosing Criteria; Writing a Draft: Synthesizing Observations 
You will begin to define the criteria you will use for your analysis. Focus on the drafting stage should be geared towards how rhetorical, technical, and cultural analysis features overlap and inform each other in the creation of community. Conduct your interview and print out the results.

Specific Computer Activities

You will choose specific criteria to analyze the e-zine, and begin to draft your paper in class. Group work will involve emailing each other for feedback on drafts as well as sending an email to the instructor about any questions or concerns the group has about the paper.
Week Four: Revision; Discussions of Technology and Alternative Media.
You will continue to work on drafting your paper, allowing peers to give you feedback. Discussion will focus on how zines, though providing a forum for groups with similar interests, may comply with or reinforce dominant culture. Our discussion will focus on how technology, particularly the Web, serves to facilitate this process of commodification at the same time that it fosters self-publishing opportunities. In your Observation Journal, evaluate the information you received from your interview and explain if or how it will change your current analysis. What kinds of information did you receive in your interview that could not be gotten from observation and/or textual analysis?

Specific Computer Activities

Discussion on bulletin board about interviews and research methods; continue to work on drafting, use peer feedback to revise paper, conference with instructor through chat or email.
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