Race and the Internet

The internet is not obviously a space, but we all spend a lot of time there. It was once described as a new public sphere, but often we decry how it isolates us. These days, people talk about the internet as segregated and divisive as often as claiming that it is a space that expands our horizons. This module is fairly open in terms of final papers. Write a paper about race in the context of your social media platforms. Or investigate the kinds of algorithms that create or challenge racial (in)equality on the web. Or write the paper I've been looking for on how Russian bots exploited racial tensions during the election in ways that echo, but also are very different from, how the Soviet Union sought to exploit racial tensions in the US during the Cold War.  You are not constrained by data or form, but you also have little guidance.