Teaching Workshop: Philosophy Workshop 9

A.Y. 2023/2024
3
Max ECTS
36
Overall hours
SSD
NN
Language
Italian
Learning objectives
Undefined
Expected learning outcomes
The workshop aims to develop the following skills:

Critical thinking skills:
By the end of the workshop, students will display a sufficiently independent critical approach in selecting and interpreting the notions that are most relevant their area of study and to the broader socio-cultural context in which they operate

Communication skills:
By the end of the workshop:
- students will be able to effectively communicate the acquired knowledge and disseminate it to the general public;
- student will have developed basic IT skills concerning knowledge preservation and transfer.

Learning skills:
By the end of the workshop, students will have developed the learning skills required to continue their studies in keeping with their own research interests. In order to meet this objective, students will also develop relevant skills in the independent interpretation of sources and in the use of basic IT tool for bibliographic research.
Single course

This course cannot be attended as a single course. Please check our list of single courses to find the ones available for enrolment.

Course syllabus and organization

Single session

Responsible
Lesson period
First semester
Course syllabus
"Professionalizing laboratory" module
The teaching program includes the presentation and discussion of the following topics:

1) Conceptual framework of "social network":
A society made up of only knots and arcs
Information as the foundation of the social structure and determination of the individual
Garland's control society: from individual history to context-based determination. Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism
Definition of device
The notion of meme from Dawkins to the present day
Esposito's notions of community and immunity
Virality: Girard's thesis and its influence on social media
The orientation of cognitive psychology theses on viral information
The basics of social network analysis:
- cohesion
- geodesic
- density
- echo and bandwidth
- the different forms of centrality
- structural gaps
Some fundamental case histories:
- six degrees of separation
- the law of the few
- the strength of weak ties
- self-organized systems
- the innovation curve
- Trump and Cambridge Analytica

2) Social networks applied to content. Google and the weight of words:
Information retrieval
Bots, crawling, semantic fields
PageRank: how Google's algorithm works
Algorithm updates
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The project of a promotional campaign
Data reuse. The world in a computer
Generative semantic artificial intelligence

3) Applications: Analysis and project tools:
- NodeXL and social network analysis
- Google Analytics
- Google Trends
- Google Search Console
- Google ADS

4) Exercises by students on analysis tools in order to produce analysis documents with a strategic vision for managing a communication campaign.



Meeting calendar:
Fri 6/10 - 2.30pm-6.30pm aula M302
Fri 10/13 - 2.30pm-6.30pm aula M302
Fri 20/10 - 2.30pm-6.30pm aula M302
Fri 10/11 - 2.30pm-6.30pm aula M302
Fri 17/11 - 2.30pm-6.30pm aula M302
Prerequisites for admission
No prior knowledge is required
Teaching methods
The teacher will use: a) frontal lessons; b) assignment of exercises to students divided into groups. Each group will be assigned an analysis task on a case study, about data provided by the teacher. Each group will be invited to present the developed analysis document in the classroom
Teaching Resources
Arielli, Emanuele; Bottazzini, Paolo, Idee virali. Perché i pensieri si diffondono, il Mulino, Bologna, 2018

Barabási, Albert-László, 2003, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, New York, Penguin Books; trad. it. a cura di B. Antonielli d'Oulx, Link. La scienza delle reti, Torino, Einaudi, 2004.

Benkler, Yochai; Faris, Robert; Roberts, Hal; Zuckerman, Ethan, 2017, Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda, «Columbia Journalism Re-view», 3 marzo 2017

Blakemore, S. (1999), The Meme machine, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Bonacich, Phillip, 1987, Power and Centrality: A Family of Measures, in « The American Journal of Sociology», vol. 92, n. 5, Marzo 1987, pp. 1170-1182

Bourdieu, Pierre, 1980, Le capital social, in «Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales», Vol. 31, gennaio 1980, pp. 2-3

Brodie, R. (1996), Virus of the mind: The new science of the meme, Seattle: Integral Press

Burt, Ronald, 2005, Brokerage and Closure. An Introduction to Social Capital, New York, Oxford University Press

Coleman, James S., 1988, Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital, «The American Journal of Sociology», Vol. 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure, pp. S95-S120

Coleman, James; Katz, Elihu; Menzel, Herbert, 1966, Medical Innovation: A Diffusion Study, New York, Bobbs-Merrill

Dawkins, Richard, 1976, The Selfish Gene, Oxford, Oxford University Press; trad. it. a cura di G. Conte e A. Serra, Il gene egoista. La parte immortale di ogni essere vivente, Milano, Mondadori, 1992

Del Vicario, M., Vivaldo, G., Bessi, A., Zollo, F., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., Quattrociocchi, W (2016), Echo Chambers: Emotional Contagion and Group Polarization on Facebook. Scientific Reports, 6, 37825

Floridi, Luciano, 2010, Information. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Freeman, Linton, 1977, A Set of Measures of Centrality Based on Betweenness, in «Sociome-try», Vol. 40, n.1, pp. 35-41

Garland, David, 2001, The Culture of Control. Crime and Social Order in Contemporary So-ciety, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press

Gladwell, Malcom, 2000, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, London, Little Brown; trad. it. a cura di P. Spinato, Il punto critico. I grandi effetti dei pic-coli cambiamenti, Milano, Rizzoli, 2000

Granovetter, Mark, 1973, The Strenght of Weak Ties, Chicago, University of Chicago Press; trad. it. a cura di M. Eve e M. Follis, La forza dei legami deboli, Milano, RCS libri.

Kahneman, D. (2012), Pensieri lenti e veloci, Milano: Mondadori.

Katz, Elihu; Lazarsfeld, Paul, 1955, Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications, New York, The Free Press; trad. it. parziale a cura di M. Morcellini, L'influenza personale in comunicazione, Roma, Armando Editore, 2012

Lippmann, Walter, 1922, Public Opinion, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company; trad. it. a cura di C. Mannucci, L'opinione pubblica, Roma, Donzelli, 1999.

Milgram, Stanley, 1967, The Small-World Problem, in « Psychology Today», vol. 1, no. 1, Maggio 1967, pp. 61-67

Page, L, Brin, S., Motwani, R., Winograd, T. (1999), The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web, in Technical Report, Stanford InfoLab

Pariser, Eli, 2011, The Filter Bubble. What the Internet Is Hiding from You, New York, The Penguin Press

Quattrociocchi, W, Vicini, A. (2016), Misinformation. Guida alla società dell'informazione e della credulità, Milano: Franco Angeli

Rogers, Everett, 1962, Diffusion of Innovation, New York, Glencoe, Free Press of Glencoe; 2003, Fifth Edition, New York, The Free Press

Salganik, M. J., Watts, D. J. (2008), Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market, Social Psychology Quarterly, 74(4), 338.

Shannon, Claude; Weaver, Warren, 1949, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urba-na-Champaign, Illinois University Press

Tarde, Gabriel, 1890, Les lois de l'imitation. Étude sociologique, Paris, Librairie Felix Alcan; trad. it a cura di F. Domenicali, Le leggi dell'imitazione. Studio sociologico, Torino, Rosenberg&Sellier, 2012

Thiel, P. (2007), The Straussian moment, in Hamerton-Kelly, R. (2007). Politics and Apoca-lypse. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, pp. 189-218

Watts, Duncan, 2011, Everything is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer, New York, Ran-dom House

Watts, Duncan; Strogatz, Steven H., 1998, Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks, «Nature», vol. 393, 4 giugno 1998

Wu, T. (2016), The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, New York: Knopf

Zuboff, Shoshana, Il capitalismo della sorveglianza. Il futuro dell'umanità nell'era dei nuovi poteri, trad. it. a cura di P. Bassotti, Luiss University Press, Roma, 2019
Assessment methods and Criteria
Learning assessment methods:
participation in the proposed group activities and drafting of a final presentation

Evaluation criteria:

- autonomy of judgement;

- ability to cooperate in a work group;

- communication and expression skills, including with information technologies;

- ability to summarize and write correctly;

- autonomy in the use and verification of sources, basic bibliographic and IT tools for research and scientific updating
Modules or teaching units
Laboratorio Professionalizzante
- University credits: 2
Humanities workshops: 20 hours
Professor: Bottazzini Paolo

Ricerca Bibliografica e redazione di un testo scientifico filosofico
- University credits: 1
Humanities workshops: 16 hours

Professor(s)