Assignment 1: Annotated Bibliography
CCT 320, Professor Alex Hanna
As we discussed in lecture, technology is very much tied up with the development
of nation-states, politics, and cultural identity.
Your goal in this assignment is to write an annotated bibliography of several
popular and scholarly articles which describe how a particular kind of technology
has had political and/or social change. You will have to pick and read four
academic articles and four popular (e.g. newspaper, magazine, blog) articles on
the topic.
By technology, I mean some kind of physical or cultural artifact which is the
practical application of knowledge. This is an intentionally broad definition which
allows you to have some latitude. As examples, we will discuss the technologies
of railways, newspapers, and the printing press in class.
For the purposes of this exercise, you need to select a technology. Examples of
technologies which you can use include the following:
• Television (or some subset thereof, e.g. broadcast news)
• Radio (or some subset thereof, e.g. top 40 radio)
• Movies (or the movie theater)
• The scientific method
• The heliocentric system
• The telescope
• The cotton gin
• The steam engine
• The microprocessor
• The FORTRAN programming language
• Antibiotics
• Hand washing
I advise you to avoid picking a technology which is somewhat recent (e.g. social
media, gene editing) because it can be years or even decades before societal-level
changes manifest a result of these technologies.
You will be looking for both scholarly and popular articles. Andrew Nicholson
from the UTM Libraries will be in class next week to present on how best to
find scholarly sources related to your topic. For popular articles, please look
for sources which are well-regarded publications. The Globe and Mail is a
reputable source. Breitbart, OccupyDemocrats, and other clickbait-y sites are
not. Also be careful when sourcing from a site like Medium, which publishes
both professionally-produced content as well as user-generated content.
Each annotation should be about 150-200 words long. Each should contain the
following: – A clear explanation of the technology under discussion – The political
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or social change which occurred or is occurring as a result of the technology – A
clear reconstruction of the argument the author is making about the connection
between the technology and the change – An assessment on whether the article’s
argument is convincing
The annotated bibliography should follow proper APA style. You should write
out the citation to the article, followed by the annotation on the next line. An
example:
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books.
This book is about the development of nationalism in the West.
There are multiple technologies under discussion. They include. . .
