Midterm Assignment: The Platform Autopsy Proposal

Objective

The purpose of this midterm is to lay a strong foundation for your final "Platform Autopsy Project." By the end of this assignment, you will have a well-defined topic, a clear research plan, and a roadmap for your creative project. This is your opportunity to get feedback on your ideas and ensure you are on the right track for a successful final.

Assignment Prompt

You will submit a comprehensive proposal document that outlines your plan for the final project. This document will consist of three main parts: your Topic Proposal, an Annotated Bibliography of your chosen sources, and your Creative Execution Plan.

Part 1: Topic Proposal (~300 words)

This section is where you define the scope of your investigation.

1. Your Chosen Feature: Clearly state the specific, feature-driven digital artifact you will be investigating for your Platform Autopsy Project (e.g., "Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist generator").
2. Rationale: Briefly explain why you chose this feature. What makes it a compelling subject for analysis within the context of our course on global media cultures? What are the global implications of your feature?

A Note on Crafting Good Research Questions

In critical media studies, a good research question is not one you can answer with a simple Google search. It should be open-ended, meaning it doesn't have a simple yes/no answer. Your question should be analytical, pushing you to ask "how?" or "why?" a feature works the way it does, rather than just describing "what" it is. Most importantly, a strong question is one where the answer is genuinely unknown to you at the start; the goal of your research is to develop a compelling, evidence-based argument, not to confirm something you already believe.

1. Guiding Research Questions: List at least three specific, critical questions that will guide your investigation. These questions should connect to the three prongs of the final project's analysis (Policy & Design, Business Pressures, Cultural Norms).
   • Example for Spotify's Discover Weekly:
     • How does Spotify's user agreement (policy) justify the data collection necessary for this feature to function and what impact does this have on different geographies?
     • What is the economic incentive (business pressure) for Spotify to create a hyper-personalized experience rather than a purely user-directed one? How does the affect users in different countries as the algorithm and privacy laws change?
     • How has the "Discover Weekly" ritual (cultural norm) changed how users find new music and how artists get discovered globally?

Part 2: Annotated Bibliography (~700-800 words)

This section demonstrates your engagement with the course materials and your initial primary source research. You must identify the seven sources you plan to use for your final project.

• Three Course Texts: Select the four books or readings from our syllabus that are most relevant to your topic.
  • Course Texts (Your Analytical Toolkit 🛠️): Think of the three required course texts as the set of critical lenses you will use to analyze your topic. These books (like The Cost of Connection or Netflix Nations) provide the theoretical frameworks and key concepts—such as "platform imperialism" or "data colonialism"—that will form the foundation of your argument and help you explain how and why your chosen feature operates the way it does.
• Three Primary Sources: Find three initial primary sources (e.g., a specific news article, a corporate blog post announcing the feature, a section of the platform's terms of service, a popular YouTube video critiquing the feature).
  • Primary Sources (Your Evidence 🔍): Think of your three required primary sources as the raw evidence you are investigating. These are materials directly from or about the platform feature you are studying. Examples include a section of the platform's official Terms of Service, a news article from a publication like 404 Media or the Wall Street Journal that investigates the feature, a corporate blog post announcing its launch, or the user-generated content created with the feature itself.

For each of the six sources, provide a full citation and a concise annotation (100-150 words) that answers the following question: "How will this specific source help me analyze my chosen feature?" Be specific. For example, instead of saying "I will use The Cost of Connection to discuss data," say "I will use Couldry and Mejias's theory of 'data relations' from The Cost of Connection to argue that Spotify's Discover Weekly re-frames users not as listeners, but as raw data sources for training its recommendation algorithm."

Part 3: Creative Execution Plan (~200 words)

This section outlines your plan for the creative portion of the final project.

1. Chosen Format: Declare which of the three creative formats you will produce: a short documentary/video essay, a podcast episode, or an interactive website.